Excerpt from Rowland Bradshaw: His Struggles and Adventures on the Way to Fame; With Twenty-Eight Illustrations on Steel

The reader will perceive, from the brief way in which we bring facts before him, that he must be on his mettle, or many of our happiest conceits may escape him, and thus be a waste of time to both of us. With this hint let us proceed.

In a tolerably wide street, and one that is honoured with forming an obtuse angle with the one which the town hall distinguishes, might be seen a remarkably grand Sign, every word, and in some lines, every letter being in different colors; though none but what was either gilded in the raising, perspective, or in the letter itself. Some of the letters were sloping and graceful, some thick where it is usual to make them thin, some were running three or four yards in the ground, whilst others appeared as though they were resolved to spring into the passing carts. It was one mass Of flourish and grandeur, light and shadow, and as the artist had discovered that the sun shone on it from the left hand in the morning, and reversed his beams in the afternoon, he had resolved to meet the contingency; so, judiciously shadowed one word on one side, and another on the other, alternately. The ground was to imitate no less than twenty different woods, so lined as to form quiet radii, whilst outside the border was half as many different sorts of the richest veined marbles. Of course a concentration of so many glories a little confused the delighted orbs of the Fleighers, as not one in three could make it out; but this, perhaps, added to, rather than diminished, the 'gorgeousness of the mass.

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