sort of greengrocer's stall erected
in front of my ironmongery wares, garlanding the rusty memorials of
ancient times with cresses, cabbages, leeks, and water purpy.

As I have some idea that I am writing too well to be understood, I
humble myself to ordinary language, and aver, with becoming modesty,
that I do think myself capable of sustaining a publication of a
miscellaneous nature, as like to the Spectator or the Guardian, the
Mirror or the Lounger, as my poor abilities may be able to accomplish.
Not that I have any purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general learning
and power of expression I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are
little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are
made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only
because they are not easily understood. There are some of the
great moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on
a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known and least-esteemed
characters in town march in as heroes, and sultans, and so forth, and,
by dint of tawdry dresses, get some consideration until they are found
out. It is not, however, prudent to commence with throwing stones, just
when I am striking out windows of my own.

I think even the local situation of Little Croftangry may be considered
as favourable to my undertaking. A nobler contrast there can hardly
exist than that of the huge city, dark with the smoke of ages, and
groaning with the various sounds of active industry or idle revel,
and the lofty and craggy hill, silent and solitary as the grave--one
exhibiting the full tide of existence, pressing and precipitating itself
forward with the force of an inundation; the other resembling some
time-worn anchorite, whose life passes as silent and unobserved as the
slender rill which escapes unheard, and scarce seen, from the fountain
of his patron saint. The city resembles the busy temple, where the
modern Comus and Mammon hold their court, and thousands sacrifice ease,
independence, and virtue itself at their shrine; the misty and lonely
mountain seems as a throne to the majestic but terrible Genius of feudal
times, when the same divinities dispensed coronets and domains to those
who had heads to devise and arms to execute bold enterprises.

I have, as it were, the two extremities of the moral world at my
threshold. From the front door a few minutes' walk brings me into the
heart of a wealthy and populous city; a