the steps with the small boys staring. He stood
on the steps peering out wistfully, with his hand
shading his eyes, but could not make them out.
Instead, a cab came driving up hastily, the door
of which was half open, and a gentleman jumped
out and stood before the captain, whom, after a
moment, he recollected as his visitor of the
evening before. It was Ross, with flaming eyes
and sunburnt cheeks. "Now," he said, "so I
have caught you. I'll settle with you by-and-
by. But I have some one else to look to now.
here, let me pass!"

           INNS, OLD AND NEW.

ONE of the pleasantest chapters in what
might be called " cozy" literature, is yet
unwritten the history of inns. Some diligent
Dryasdust has been laboriously antiquarian over
the signboards of inns, but he has stayed up
above on his signboards, like Hogarth's stupid
workman, unconsciously sawing away the
support from under him. The subject of
inns would be full of colour, of poetry, of
comfort, of warmth, of romance; for very
little pride would enter into such a review;
perhaps only at the few moments when the
"bill" flutters into sight, like a distant speck of
a sail upon the horizon. So cozy a subject
should have a cozy man to deal with it. Most
suitable of all, were he living, Leigh Hunt, the
poet of daily life, the extractor of sweets from the
common conventionalities which custom makes
us neglect, the distiller of perfumes from some
such unpleasant matters as the refuse of gas-
works. We all remember his comically selfish
little devices for augmenting the satisfaction in
such comforts as bed, breakfast, a flower-garden,
a study, a library. Assuredly he would have been
the artist to chronicle inns and their humours
and changes. He was, indeed, yearning to
touch it, as a little patch of landscape brought
into his "Book for a Corner" shows. He revels
in a friend's walk along the dusty high road, who
presently halts about noon at some old converted
Elizabethan mansion, nestling coolly in a wild
garden, with all its windows open, and a pleasant
air of desertion and abandonment. There were
carvings, and old pictures, and wainscoting, and
narrow panes; and there, in a cool corner, he
took out a jewelled book, and in the Elizabethan
atmosphere read a gorgeous Elizabethan play,
whose pages were encrusted with gems, and
stiff with rich and poetic embroidery. Never,
thought Hazlitt (for he was the wayfarer), did
the recollection of that reading in that converted
inn pass from his recollection.

The old inns of reality, the old inns of
fiction, the inn of Gil Blas, where the
Parasite got his dinner, and the Maypole with
its red curtains, and whose shelter it were
worth being well benighted, overtaken with
snow, and rain, and dark, to be sure of securing.
After all, there is a coldness about the Boar's
Head, Eastcheap. The association verges on
the correct and classical. It is far different with                                                           the Mitre. What long snug warm delightful
nights! Can we not look back, too, at that
hostel? Do we not always feel a sense of
welcome and expectation when Mr. Boswell, parting
with Mr. Johnson, proposes that he should
meet again, "sir," that night at the Mitre?
And do we not seem, as it were, to hurry to fetch
our hats, so as to be in good time at the rendezvous.
What long nights over the wine! When
our two gentlemen break up to go home—when
it is very late indeed—do we not seem to have
sat long, and heard much pleasant rambling talk,
confined by the panelled enclosure of the little
"box;" and do we not somehow feel a little regret
when the great writer Samuel forswore his
pint courageously, and sat there sipping tea or
water: as though that notion jarred on the idea of
a cozy inn? It spoiled the idea of happiness
and comfort; for the eye of the great Samuel
must have wandered wistfully to Mr. Boswell's
glass, and the cold idea of restraint and
penance must have entered in. Wonderful Mitre
nights! Glorified ennui! No wonder that
Johnson was heard later, declaiming the melodious
lines of Shenstone:

       Whoever has travelled life's dull round
            Where'er his footsteps may have been,
        May sigh to think he still has found
            His warmest welcome at an inn.

We hear the Doctor sonorously rolling out
these lines "with emotion," says Mr. Boswell.
His warmest welcome at an inn! True, certainly,
thirty years ago. To-day, utterly false; for we
have a warmer welcome at the first shop we
enter to buy a pair of gloves, than at the
Grand Hotel of our time.

Inns long ago—that is, the inn of our Jacket
period—had a flavour and association almost as
divine as that of the theatre of the same date—
especially at Christmas-time. Common earthly
condiments, say the bread, and the tea, and the
cream, and, above all, the muffin, which the
juices of the butter seemed to saturate in a rich
and softened fashion not attainable by the same
delicacy at home–all seemed to belong to a
higher dispensation. There was a Black
Bull, somewhere, which was on the homeward
route from school in a manufacturing town, and
where, after a drive of twelve miles (four insane
boys being inside, and two out), we stopped
for a breakfast, only too celestial. That Black
Bull seemed a paradise; the gastronomic prodigies
performed by the insane boys in that Eden,
passed belief—passed certainly the patience of
the attendant waiters, wearied with bringing
relays of spiritualised and transfigured muffins, and
who, at last, summoned the proprietor to intimidate
us. Never shall I forget the calm but bold
attitude assumed by young Ridley (known to us
more affectionately as The Digger; why, no
school philologist could fathom), and who met
the bully landlord with the quiet defiance of the
man of the world. How we envied, and, at the
same time, worshipped that demeanour! I hear
the Digger saying now—he was the Steerforth
of our school—with his hands in his waistcoat