Look at the country houses of the last century, and contrast them with the country houses of the present one. Why the squires are now living in as good ones as served the nobility before. The same with inns. No body used to expect to have a coffee-room carpeted. The old customer liked the old corner; the grease-mark on the wall was all from his own head. Johnson would not have been himself at the "Mitre" if he had not had his own place. The very nastiness is a recommendation to some people. The nastiness of the majority of coaching inns, however, was not their only peculiarity. The "ungrateful hurry" as Gay calls it, of everybody was quite as remarkable. Fancy, at the end of a long journey-say from Edinburgh to London-two days and two nights-being at length turned out of the cramped, cabined, confined coach, into one of these inn-yards. Lord bless us! But a journey was a journey in those days! We used to crow over our grandfathers when we got coaches to clear eight miles an hour; but what will "atmospheric" posterity think of us for being satisfied with such crawling. Nothing short of "Edinburgh to London in one day" will go down with them, and then they will think they ought to go quicker. The Board of Trade, I see, think thirtythree miles an hour, including stoppages, the equitable rate of propulsion. Pace is quite a disease: it grows with what it is fed upon. So with postage people will soon want their letters every half-hour. But my business is with inns. Fancy being at length released from bondage, and turned into one of the old inn-yards in London, for the first time, without a place to go to, or a person to speak to; yet how many thousands has it happened to! There is something fearfully appalling in finding oneself for the first time in London, without kinsman, friend, or acquaintance,

Alone, but in a crowd!

Doubly dreadful if the transition is from the merry family circle of home to the life-like death of crowded cities. The traveller's coach companions bustled and hurried away, and before he knew where he was he stood alone among strangers. Such strangers too,-horsekeepers and helpers, coachmen and cads, gentlemen with sponges and dog-collars, Cachmere shawls made at Norwich, or piping bullfinches which they'd give for an old coat. Turn into the coffee-room, that last refuge of the destitute, as Dickens well calls it-sandy floor, frouzy, faded redcurtained boxes, greasy newspapers, and Pigot's still greasier Directory. If the man who has "travelled life's dull round," sighs to think his "warmest welcome's in an inn," what must the youngster feel at first experiencing its friendly greeting. But who shall describe a night at one of these abominations, we should have Washington Irving here;— the blowing of horns, the rumbling of coaches, the clambering of horses, the oaths of stablemen, the rattling of cabs, the jingling of coaches, the wheeling of barrows, the tinkling of bells, and though last, not least, the thumps and provoking interrogatories of boots, as to whether we are "the gent. booked for the Falmouth?" or "the lady goin' to Dewizes?" Then the waiters: there is as much difference between a London waiter and a country waiter, as there is between a London 'pikeman and a country 'pikeman. The country waiter and the country 'pikeman know every body, the Londoners know nobody-that is to say, they don't know who or what То you are. that London waiters forget people's faces, is to contradict much minute and interesting information frequently supplied by these worthies on trials; but then it is generally to

say

the effect, that a gent. came with a lady on such a day, and had all the delicacies of the season in the Globe. They don't say Mr. and Mrs. Tomkinson, or a lady and gentleman calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Tomkinson, came on such a day, and had all the delicacies, &c.

Grateful contrast to turn from the misery and discomfort of the old coaching inns to the Victoria and Euston of the railway station. I really think the Euston cookery will bring the late unknown-untraversed desert of St. Pancras into repute, and compel the once vaunted Clarendon to hide its gastronomic head. But look first at the dimensions of the Euston-why, it's a town of itself! Take its opposite neighbour, and twin brother, the Victoria with it, and they are a city of themselves: in olden times they would have returned a member to parliament between them. Lord Euston's title has risen seventy-five and a quarter per cent. since the monster hotel was built-he should be called Lord Euston Hotel. What dribbling measures ministers promulgate for preserving the peace of the country, calling out yeomanry and enrolling cripple pensioners. Why don't they enlist the porters, waiters, boots, and runners of these great national hotels. If they were well drilled, and drawn up rank and file, with their boot-jacks and other implements of war in their hands, they would strike terror into the hearts of Dan himself and the "finist pisantry" under the sun. But to the Euston and Victoria: these houses are conducted on the continental principle of charging servants in the bill, and letting people know what they have to pay beforehand, so that no one has a right to live like a fightingcock and then grumble at the bill. In every bed-room is a list of charges, and people may occupy the vacant time consumed in drying their hands by reading the announcement in the frame. The prices are highly remunerative, but at the same time not extravagant. I don't, however, find that Peel's vaunted tariff, which was to enable every man to pay the income-tax without feeling it, has had the effect of reducing inn bills anywhere. Perhaps, like the bootmaker, inn-keepers were just going to raise their prices, and the reduction enables them to keep them as they were.

Still the charges are moderate compared to hotels at the west end, and having no servants to pay is a luxury of no small importance. One never knew what to give servants-one house was no criterion for another; and between the sour half-saucy demeanour of the underpaid, and the dapper obsequiousness of the overpaid, one was always in a fidget. I only hope that thick-headed fool, John Bull, who never seems happy from home but when he has his hand in his breeches pocket, will not contravene the salutary regulations by beginning to pay them. I would rather that he would accept the invitation at the bottom of the inn tariff, and give notice of “ any negligence or misconduct on the part of any member of the establishment."

On comparing the Euston bills with a heap that have accumulated in a corner of my portmanteau, I do not find the charges much deficient to what they are in many inns in other parts of England. Euston dinners are, by the bill of fare, but beds, breakfasts, teas, and those sort of things, are pretty much the same. Here is one from an hotel in Edinburgh-" breakfast half-a-crown," dinner, with game, "five shillings;" another from an inn at Brighton, wherein breakfast is charged two shillings a-day, with the addition of one day "ham and eggs," being

charged a shilling, and the next "eggs and ham," one and sixpence; so that, at Brighton ham and eggs is evidently the dish to order. I have a Leamington bill, too, before me, where breakfast and eggs are charged two and twopence, so that a breakfast, in an innkeeper's mind, evidently consists of toast, table-cloth, and tea-pot-all else is extra. The Leamington people have a pretty good idea of charging. I heard a story of a party of gentlemen there, who, thinking a certain number of bottles of inn wine had not the same effect upon them that the same number of bottles would have at home, determined to try how it was, by decanting themselves; when lo, and behold, the decanter would not hold the bottle by a third; to make amends, however, for the excess of measure, the landlord very properly charged them a shilling a bottle extra. I have a card before me of one of the large houses there, where "ladies-maids and servants out of livery" are offered board and lodging at one pound eight a-week, and in the servants' hall at one pound six: taking the lowest figure, nearly seventy pounds a-year-to say nothing of wages, and that, too, for people whose parents are very likely living and bringing up families upon forty. However, if people like to pay it, it is “no business of mine," as Paul Pry used to say, only if I had a servant there, I should give them about half the latter sum, and let them board themselves. I have no doubt we should both benefit by the transaction. The worst feature in an inn bill is the word Soda." It is a sure sign the wine was bad; the very reading of the word conjures up a headache, or the heartburn, or both. There is no end of " Soda" in the bills I've been looking over-so much, indeed, that I'll have no more of it, and stop the discussion by putting all the Green Dragons, and Georges, and White Swans, and Black Boys, and Bells, and Kings' Arms, and Lord Granbys, and Cross Keys, and Wellingtons, and Bluchers, into the fire. There, how they blaze!

I verily believe I have spent as much money in town inns as would have built a first-rate alms-house,-clock, vane, and all complete,-to comfort and shelter me in the decline of life. And "cui bono," I may ask, what good has it done me? Am I ever spoken of with affection or remembered with regret? Oh, no! If I am ever spoken of at all, it is as of "Number Forty-two," or as "the lushy cove in Ninety-four, wot lost the Magnet three times by over-sleeping of himself." Shocking reflection! No act stings a man half so severely as the pecuniary indiscretions of his youth; time softens all other sorrows, but these recollections rankle and canker the more the older we get. Away with them, say I!

1

The

Clubs have put a sad spoke in the wheels of London hotel-keepersat least, in as far as coffee-rooms are concerned. Every man belongs to a club, where as much or as little wine can be taken as he chooses. old custom of drinking-rather poisoning oneself-for what was called the "good of the house" is almost exploded. Vinegar cruets supply the place of magnums. Degenerate days! Could any of our hardy three-bottle ancestors see the libations of their sons, how they would blush for their degeneracy! But for the increase of population, the wine trade would be ruined-the port wine trade, at least. It is only poor old stagers who stick to the "strap,"-young ones, and people clambering up the hill of gentility, drink claret-young ones, because they are half drunk with champagne before the cloth is drawn, and

"aspirants" because they understand it is "genteel." Well, well, "it's very harmless!" as the lady said when she gave five-and-twenty guineas for a pocket-handkerchief.

An inn-hotel, perhaps, I should call it--abroad is a traveller's home his haven; in England it is little better than a harbour of refuge. It may be laid down as a rule that no one goes to an inn that can possibly avoid it. Two causes combine in effecting this: first, the want of comfort which characterises the generality of English inns; and, secondly, the exorbitance of the charges. Abroad, the hotels are the liveliest, the gayest, the pleasantest, the cheapest places going; while in England, they are generally noisy, dingy, frouzy, comfortless affairs, that we go into reluctantly, and are never happy until we are out of it again. It is hardly possible to conceive a greater difference in one and the same thing, than between the light airiness of a Calais or Boulogne hotel, and the heavy, sombre, cheese and porter air of a Dover tavern. The French hotel wears the holiday garb of a perpetual fete-the English one only wants the sign taken down, and bars put up, to look like a prison. Abroad, the colour of the building, the air of the draperies, the taste of the flowers, the neatness of the attendants, all invite you to enter, and generally to make a lengthened sojourn. In England, if any thing is attempted in the way of decoration, any thing smart or cheerful in the way of carpet or curtain, or any little bit of nature introduced in the way of shrub or flower, they seem to put to shame the rest of the furniture, or to demonstrate the sad difference between town and country plants. I write this in view of three stunted soot-catching spruces in red pots, gracing an iron balcony, the yellowing stem of the middle tree (bush rather) giving notice of premature departure. Luckless plant to be thus cut off! Spruces indeed! there is little spruceness about them. Nevertheless, unless the landlord reads this article (and I have purposely omitted all intimation of the locality), I will be bound to say he will let the whole tree wither before he thinks it necessary to remove it.

The hotels at Greenwich, Blackwall, and Richmond, and a few of the suburb holiday places are exceptions; but then they are merely summer flowers, and store their finery in the winter. Nothing can be more beautiful than the Castle garden at Richmond on a fine summer afternoon, when the Thames is alive with steamers, full of smart bonnets and bodices.

What a long way a little money will go with a single man abroadwhat enjoyment he may have for it, and what an insight he may get into life and the world at large! The great fault of Englishmen is that they always travel in shoals: one would think they expected to be eaten up by the natives, and go together for mutual protection. It is a great drawback upon observation and adventure, for they are generally too busy with their own party to look after other people, while their numbers preclude their admission into other circles. Dr. Johnson said that a postchaise had jolted many an intimacy to death, and foreign travel has had the same effect upon thousands of friendships that might have stood the ordinary jars and concussions of life. The true way to travel is to set off alone, with two shirts and a dickey, picking up acquaintance and leaving them just as chance or inclination directs. I have known two of the best friends in the world squabble before they reached the French coast, and "cut" before they got to the capital. One of

the great luxuries of continental travel undoubtedly is, the almost invariable excellence and reasonableness of the public accommodations. The scale of charges, too, is so much assimilated, that a man can make his bill out in his own mind, almost as accurately as the landlord-bed so much, breakfast so much, dinner so much. In England this is not the case, as I said before. Breakfast, at many inns, comprises a Britannia metal tea-pot, sugar-basin, and milk (called by courtesy cream), jug to match, a pot of butter and a roll-all the essentials, eggs, fried ham, cold meat, &c., being extras. At a fashionable hotel in Bond-street, dinner used to be charged item by item, even down to the bread and melted butter, and a pretty expensive affair a half-crown coffee-room used to be. Abroad, they charge you two francs for breakfast, and give you whatever you call for. I have seen men eating shrimps, hashed woodcock, red mullets, turkeys' eggs, and I don't know what else, for this sum. People talk of their indifference for the good things of this world, and their ability to dine off any thing (particularly when they have just finished a good breakfast and don't feel as if they were likely to be hungry again); but say what they will, the certainty of a good dinner and comfortable accommodation at the end of a long day, is no small cheerer to the spirits.

Railroads have done by country inns what clubs have done by London ones-in patrician parlance, "knocked the wind out of them." Nay, I think railroads have dealt a severer blow to country inns than clubs have to London inns, for the railways have closed some of the "daylights" for them altogether. What a melancholy sight is a great rambling, deserted road-side, hotel, house, and stables alike empty, and the once attractive sign, creaking and rattling on its gibbet! I saw such a one the other day : I had not seen it for five years-it was then in its glory-a nice, pretty, rough-cast, old hale house, with woodbine and black cluster vines creeping up its blue tile roof-all was in keeping. The large trim landlady rustling in black silk and well oiled front; the sly little hazel-eyed niece continually popping her head out of the best parlour window; two fine, straight, full-grown, buxom lasses acting the alternate parts of chambermaid and dairymaid; one old waiter in a clean pink striped jacket, as though he were about to ride a race; and a still older boots with large silver buckles in his shoes. All was changed. The large landlady was dead; ditto the waiter, ditto the boots. The buxom chambermaids and the pretty niece were all married -the latter to the "union" doctor, the former to farmers' servants. A travelling donkey had broken through the white railing and browsed upon the vine, pulling it nearly down, exhibiting the green damp upon the walls, and knocking the "TO LET" board crooked. The last wheelmark had died out before the door. I peeped in, but seeing the glass case that used to hold the interesting museum of pigeon pies, jelly, sticks of celery, and jaded joints gone, I beat a hasty retreat from the now deserted scene of much previous enjoyment.