by DANIEL DEFOE. and Two Letters from the “ Journey through England by a Gentleman .” CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited : london , paris , new york & melbourne . 1888....

At the end of this book there are a couple of letters from a volume of the “Travels in England” which were not by Defoe, although resembling Defoe’s work so much in form and title, and so near to it in date of publication, that a volume of one book is often found taking the place of a volume of the other.  A purchaser of Defoe’s “Travels in England” has therefore to take care that he is not buying one of the mixed sets.  Each of the two works describes England at the end of the first quarter of

I have ended this account at the utmost extent of the island of Great Britain west, without visiting those excrescences of the island, as I think I may call them—viz., the rocks of Scilly; of which what is most famous is their infamy or reproach; namely, how many good ships are almost continually dashed in pieces there, and how many brave lives lost, in spite of the mariners’ best skill, or the lighthouses’ and other sea-marks’ best notice. These islands lie so in the middle between the two vast

Bath . Sir , The Bath lies very low, is but a small city, but very compact, and one can hardly imagine it could accommodate near the company that frequents it at least three parts of the year.  I have been told of 8,000 families there at a time—some for the benefit of drinking its hot waters, others for bathing, and others for diversion and pleasure (of which, I must say, it affords more than any public place of that kind in Europe). I told you in my former letters that Epsom and Tunbridge do no

Chester . Sir , I crossed the Severn at the ferry of Ash, about ten miles above Bristol, and got to Monmouth to dinner through a rugged, indifferent country.  It is a pitiful old town, and hath nothing remarkable in it; and from thence through a fat fertile country I got to the city of Hereford at night. Hereford is the dirtiest old city I have seen in England, yet pretty large; the streets are irregular and the houses old, and its cathedral a reverend old pile, but not beautiful; the niches of