London : The City. By Claud Golding. (Hale. The County
Books. r ss.)
IN a series so extensive as the well-known County Books there must necessarily be variations in quality. It is surprising, none the less, to find a volume so much below the general level as this. Rarely, if ever, does it improve on the standard of the average guide-book. There is no attempt to depict the historic City as an entity. The method is to proceed building by building or street by street, with conscientious description, usually a slab of quotation and too often a thin and by no means helpful personal reminiscence (as of the lady, " a vision of delight," from Baltimore, " in a magnificent gown of pink whatever-it-was and a large picture hat," whom Mr. Golding once squired round the Temple). Citing among the former habitues of Fleet Street Gold- smith, Pepys, Lamb, Johnson, Richardson and Butler, the writer finds their modern counterparts in a septet headed by Edgar Wallace and culminating in Crossland (mis- spelt) ; the old seem the better. Johnson, incidentally, fares ill here. No adequate justice is done to his greatness (in one place he figures as "the old rascal "), and the well-known " noblest prospect " passage is quoted in such a form as to leave it com- pletely pointless. Altogether the book is a
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