8o A Walk from 



tories and pictures of common life. In them it has an 

 individuality as marked as the parish church, couchante 

 in its wide-rimmed nest of grave stones ; as marked in 

 unique architecture, location, and surroundings. In 

 none of these features will you find two alike, if you 

 travel from one end of the country to the other; 

 especially among those a century old. You might as 

 well mistake one of the living animals for the other, 

 as to mistake " The Blue Boar " for the " Bed Lion." 

 They differ as much from each other in general make 

 and aspect as do their nominal prototypes. To give every 

 one of their thousands " a local habitation and a name " 

 of striking distinctness, has required an ingenuity which 

 has produced many interesting feats of house-building 

 and nomenclature. Both these departments of genius 

 figure largely in the poetry and classics of the insti- 

 tution, with which the reading million of America have 

 been familiar from youth up. And when any of them 

 come to travel in England, it will greatly enhance their 

 enjoyment to find that the pictures they have admired 

 and the descriptions they have read of the famous 

 country inn have been true to the very life and letter. 

 All its salient features they recognise at once, and are 

 ready to exclaim, " How natural ! " meaning by that, 

 how true is the original to the picture which they have 

 seen so frequently. If they go far enough, they will 



