Gents Mag 1839 part 1 p.386

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1839 part 1 p.386 which we shall therefore draw the attention of our readers. This book should be titled A GUIDE. This word expresses the visitor's wants, which the usual titles of "Sketches," "Description," "History, and Antiquities, &c." do not; being, in fact, applicable to a species of book nearly useless as a Guide. This title should stand on the back and side; the book should be of small 8vo size, covered with canvas, if it does not increase the thickness inconveniently, and a few copies should be kept interleaved. Travellers who take notes would prefer such a copy. A map of the place, upon which the objects described are clearly located, and including if possible a circle of suburb about a mile radius, should invariably accompany the Guide. The next points, and those upon which almost all Guide-books are grossly deficient, are style, general arrangement, and description. The style must be concise. Figures of speech, flourishing periods, epithets, should especially be avoided. Nothing is more common in a Guide, and nothing can be more offensive. The words employed should be those in every-day use, the construction of the sentences simple, the periods brief; the phrases former and latter, if possible, should be avoided; the terms of art explained in foot notes; the study of the writer being to carry the reader forward with the description. The style employed by Mr. Rickman in his "Architecture" is well suited to the purposes of a Guide-book. Much depends on the arrangement adopted; and this, which in a general history should be chronological, must here be strictly topical. The visitor is to be led from place to place in that order that shall cause the loss of as little time as possible on the way, and in such order he will visit the cathedral, castle, &c; but, when safely landed at one of these stations, the arrangement of its details should be that pointed out under description. A Guide should commence with an epitome of the local history, containing as many facts and as concisely stated as possible, and followed by such general remarks in confirmation as the local evidences may warrant. The reader thus prepared for what to expect, will tax his memory for such passages as the several history of the country as may bear upon the local history before him. At Bolton-le-Moors, for example, or in Craven, the traveller might not remember that James Earl of Derby was beheaded, or that Anne Countess of Dorset and Pembroke resided; but if his attention were drawn to these facts, his memory would probably put him in possessiojn of much of the general history of those persons, and therefore of their aera; and it is needless to say how much additional gratification the visit would then afford. After the general history, it will be proper to place, in the order recommended, the local curiosities in a succession of sections, which will of course form the bulk of the volume. In a following chapter should be enumerated those objects that present few or no peculiarities, and which, from their being found in equal or greater perfection or magnitude elsewhere, are not commony visited by strangers. Such would probably be the infirmary, the jail, the gasworks, or the manufactories; objects which it is very proper to enumerate, briefly stating their leading particulars. Another chapter should give the statistics of the place, its general commerce and manufactures, its institutions, societies, and religious sects; and a final chapter should be bestowed upon the natural history and general geological position of the place, with lists of local fossils. minerals, and plants. Much depends upon the employment of a proper method of description; meaning by description the arrangement and account of the details, more particularly of the buildings to be visited. This part of the volume cannot be fitly executed without the addition of a few well-selected vignettes of the general plan, elevation, and any peculiarities of detail not admitting of verbal description; and for these purposes mere line drawings are more intelligible and less expensive. The description should also include any remarkable armorial bearing, especially such as are carved upon or coeval with any part of a building. In the description of all English
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