34 NIMRO&S NORTHERN TOUR. 



than sending him " to contend against twenty Yorkshire jockeys." 

 But perhaps he considered this " a fool's advice," for what can 

 the Quarterly Review know of racing ? But what says the Fool 

 in the play of King Lear ? Why that " he is mad who trusts in 

 the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, or a * * ; s oath/'' 



At rather an early dinner-hour, the Wellington pulled up at 

 the door of the Black Swan Inn, in the ancient, but dreadfully 

 dull town of York. I must here also do justice to the accommo- 

 dation afforded the passengers by this coach, at this inn, where 

 as good a dinner was provided as hungry people need wish for; 

 nor shall I soon forget the most excellent leg of the four-year-old 

 black-faced sheep which formed part of it, bred, fed, and killed 

 by the landlord. It was likewise amusing to contrast the speed 

 with which we had travelled from the Metropolis to York (two 

 hundred miles in less than twenty-four hours !) with a framed 

 and glazed* advertisement, which hung over the fire-place, in- 

 forming the public that, " God willing," their persons would be 

 conveyed from York to the Metropolis in somewhere about as 

 many days. The date thereof I do not now recollect. I wish I 

 could continue in the same strain of commendation to my jour- 

 ney's end, for I hate to have occasion to find fault. But picture 

 to yourself a coach pulling up at the cheerless hour of midnight 

 at the end of a journey of nearly three hundred miles, and the 

 passengers shown into a room, in the month of November, with- 

 out a hatful of fire in the grate, and full of foul air, strongly im- 

 pregnated with gas ! Such, however, was our reception at the 

 hotel we drove to in Newcastle, and this, too, in the very heart 

 of the coal district ! I may, however, have been unfortunate in 

 my day, for several gentlemen to whom I mentioned the circum- 

 stance, assured me that in a general way the house in question is 

 a very excellent one, and the private department comfortable 

 and well-conducted. Coach Inns, as they are called, from the 

 circumstance of an extravagant rent being given on condition of 

 a certain number of coaches emptying their live lumber into them 

 daily, are, however, generally sad uncomfortable places, and a 

 hint to landlords to study a little more the comforts of travellers, 

 like myself, may not be here out of place. 



The next morning the carriage of Mr. Surtees, of Hamsterley 

 Hall, arrived in Newcastle, for the purpose of conveying me 

 thither distant about ten miles, but as Mr. Surtees, jun., ac- 

 companied it, and the day was a very fine one, he proposed that 

 we should ride to Hamsterley in preference to going in the car- 

 riage, which I readily agreed to, particularly as he gave me to 



* For a copy of this see New Sporting Magazine, vol. i. p. 438. 



