228 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



all to himself, as was the luck of Irving also ; who 

 answers his every summons, and looks into his eyes 

 with the simplicity and directness of a child; who 

 could step from no page but that of Scott or the 

 divine William himself; who puts the ' coals " on 

 your grate with her own hands, and when you ask 

 for a lunch spreads the cloth on one end of the table 

 while you sit reading or writing at the other, and 

 places before you a whole haunch of delicious cold 

 mutton with bread and homebrewed ale, and requests 

 you to help yourself; who, when bedtime arrives, 

 lights you up to a clean, sweet chamber, with a high 

 canopied bed hung with snow-white curtains ; who 

 calls you in the morning, and makes ready your 

 breakfast while you sit with your feet on the fender 

 before the blazing grate ; and to whom you pay your 

 reckoning on leaving, having escaped entirely all the 

 barrenness and publicity of hotel life, and had all the 

 privacy and quiet of home without any of its cares 

 or interruptions. And this, let me say here, is the 

 great charm of the characteristic English inn ; it has 

 a domestic, homelike air. " Taking mine ease at 

 mine inn " has a real significance in England. You 

 can take your ease and more ; you can take real solid 

 comfort. In the first place, there is no bar-room, 

 and consequently no loafers, or pimps, or fumes of 

 tobacco or whiskey ; then there is no landlord or 

 proprietor or hotel clerk to lord it over you. The 

 host, if there is such a person, has a way of keeping 

 himself in the background, or absolutely out of sight, 



