my dinner. The transition was natural to
the Highland Inns, with the oatmeal
bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout
from the loch, the whiskey, and perhaps
(having the materials so temptingly at hand)
the Athol brose. Once, was I coming south
from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste,
hoping to change quickly at the station at the
bottom of a certain wild historical glen,
when these eyes did with mortification see
the landlord come out with a telescope and
sweep the whole prospect for the horses:
which horses were away picking up their own
living, and did not heave in sight under four
hours. Having thought of the loch-trout I
was taken by quick association to the Anglers'
Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable
feats of angling, by lying in the bottom
of the boat, whole summer days, doing
nothing with the greatest perseverance: which
I have generally found to be as effectual
towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle
and the utmost science); and to the pleasant
white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bed-rooms
of those inns, overlooking the river, and the
ferry, and the green ait, and the church-spire,
and the country bridge; and to the peerless
Emma with the bright eyes and the pretty
smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural
grace that would have converted Blue
Beard. Casting my eyes upon my Holly-
Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing
coals, tlie pictures of a score or more of those
wonderful English posting-inns which we are
all so sorry to have lost, which were so large
and so comfortable, and which were such
monuments of British submission to rapacity
and extortion. He who would see
these houses pining away, let him walk from
Basingstoke or even Windsor to London,
by way of Hounslow, and moralise on
their perishing remains; the stables
crumbling to dust; unsettled laborers and
wanderers bivouacing in the outhouses; grass
growing in the yards; the rooms where erst
so many hundred beds of down were made
up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteen-pence
a-week; a little ill-looking beer-shop shrinking
in the tap of former days, burning
coach-house gates for fire-wood, having one
of its two windows bunged up, as if it had
received punishment in a fight with the
Railroad; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making
bulldog standing in the door-way. What
could I next see in my fire, so naturally,
as the new railway- house of these times
near the dismal country station; with
nothing particular on draught but cold
air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in
the larder but new mortar, and no business
doing, beyond a conceited affectation of
luggage in the hall? Then, I came to the Inns
of Paris, with the pretty appartement of four
pieces up one hundred and seventy-five
waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the
bell all day long without influencing
anybody's mind or body but your own, and
the not-too-much-for-dinner, considering
the price. Next, to the provincial Inns of
France, with the great church-tower rising
above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling
merrily up and down the street beyond, and
the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms,
which are never right, unless taken at the
precise minute when by getting exactly twelve
hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally
become so. Away I went, next, to the lesser
road-side Inns of Italy; where all the dirty
clothes in the house (not in wear) are always
lying in your ante-room; where the mosquitoes
make a raisin pudding of your face in summer,
and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you
get what you can, and forget what you can't;
where I should again like to be boiling my
tea in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for
want of a tea-pot. So, to the old palace Inns
and old monastery Inns, in towns and
cities of the same bright country; with
their massive quadrangular stair-cases
whence you may look from among
clustering pillars high into the blue vault of
Heaven; with their stately banqueting-
rooms, and vast refectories; with their
labyrinths of ghostly bed-chambers, and their
glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no
appearance of reality or possibility. So, to the
close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with
their pale attendants, and their peculiar
smell of never letting in the air. So, to the
immense fantastic Inns of Venice, with the
cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the
corner; the grip of the watery odors on one
particular little bit of the bridge of your
nose (which is never released while you stay
there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral
tolling midnight. Next, I put up for a
minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where
your going to bed, no matter at what hour,
appears to be the tocsin for everybody else's
getting up; and where, in the table d'hôte
room at the end of the long table (with several
Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all
made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men,
entirely drest in jewels and dirt, and having
nothing else upon them, will remain all night,
clinking glasses, and singing about the river
that flows and the grape that grows and
Rhine wine that beguiles and Rhine woman
that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and
ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of
it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to
other German Inns, where all the eatables are
sodden down to the same flavor, and where
the mind is disturbed by the apparition of
hot puddings, and boiled cherries sweet and
slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the
repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from
a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition
through the windows of the student
beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I
put out to sea for the Inns of America, with
their four hundred beds a-piece, and their
eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at
dinner every day. Again, I stood in the bar-rooms