FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 207 



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 home- 

 brewed 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 en- 

 tirely 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, that is entirely 



