Foreign Guide-books.
—The samples of foreign English preserved in your pages are nearly equalled in ludicrous effect by the novel information often found in guide-books and manuals published on the continent for the use of strangers in England. Our metropolis is an inexhaustible subject of blunders on the part of the compilers of these works, of whom not a few deserve to rank with the Frenchman who, having heard something of a coal duty in connexion with St. Paul's, gravely told his readers that the cathedral was built on sea-coal.
The following extract is from a work entitled Londres et ses Environs, Paris, 2 vols. with plates: the compiler states that, having resided fifteen years in London, "il est, plus que tout autre, en état d'en parler avec certitude."
"Ce gouffre majestueux a englouti la ville de Westminster, le bourg de Southwark, et quarante-cinq villages, dont les noms, conservés dans les différens quartiers qu'ils occupaient, sont—
Mora
Islington
Falgate
Mile End New Town
Ratcliffe
The Hermitage