378

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

. 'iri

hundred people, with their horses, could without difficulty belodged and fed. The bedding, the tapestry, above all, theabundance of clean and fine linen was matter of wonder.Valuable plate was often set on the tables. Nay, there weresigns which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In the seven-teenth century England abounded with excellent inns of everyrank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted ona public house such as Walton has described, where the brickfloor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round withballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where ablazing fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh fromthe neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge.At the larger houses of entertainment were to be found bedshung with silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the bestwhich was drunk in London.* The innkeepers too, it wassaid, were not like other innkeepers. On the Continent thelandlord was the tyrant of those who crossed the threshold.In England he was a servant. Never was an Englishmanmore at home than when he took his ease in his inn. Evenmen of fortune, who might in their own mansions haveenjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of passing theirevenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house of publicentertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort andfreedom could in no other place be enjoyed in equal per-fection. This feeling continued during many generations tobe a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns longfurnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnsondeclared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, how-ever friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as thatwhich was to be found at an inn.

* See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison’s HistoricalDescription of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys’s account of histour in the summer of 160S. The excellence of the English inns is noticedin the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.