ABSTRACT
I intended, my dear Frank, (or rather, my dear cousins conjointly – for this epistle is addressed to all of you,) to have delayed offering you any general sketches of London in 1825, till I had prepared you for their due appreciation, by placing before you a few more of its particular features. But as I hear from authentic sources, that certain evil disposed persons are, at this present writing, engaged in laying a deep hatched and deadly plot, against the very existence of what I had intended should form one of the most characteristic and attractive of my themes, I must pounce upon it / at once, before it passes into a thing that was; – seeing that it is the very essence of these agreeable missives, to make you acquainted with nothing but what actually is; leaving what has been to those who have been and what is to be, to those who are not.
