man road in the twilight,
grass-grown, choked with underbrush, but still running straight and
clearly defined as when it shook to the tread of Roman legions. It is
eery to follow one of these haunted roads, filled with the far-off
thoughts and fancies it naturally evokes, and then suddenly to come out
again into the world of today, as it joins the highway once more, and
the lights of a wayside inn welcome us back to humanity, with perhaps a
touring car standing at the door.

One need hardly say that the English wayside inn is as much a feature of
the English countryside as the English hawthorn. Its praises have been
the theme of essayists and poets for generations, and at its best there
is a cosiness and cheer about it which warm the heart, as its quaintness
and savour of past days keep alive the sense of romantic travel. There
the spirit of ancient hospitality still survives, and, though the
motor-car has replaced the stage-coach, that is, after all, but a
detail, and the old, low-ceilinged rooms, the bay windows with their
leaded panes, the tap-room with its shining vessels, the great kitchen,
the solid English fare, the brass candlesticks at bedtime, and the
lavendered sheets, still preserve the atmosphere of a novel by Fielding
or an essay by Addison.

There still, as in Shakespeare's day, one can take one's ease at one's
inn, as perhaps in the hostelries of no other land. It is the frequency
and excellence of these English inns that make it charmingly possible to
see England, as it is best seen, on foot or on a bicycle. It is not a
country of isolated wonders, with long stretches of mere road between.
Every mile counts for something. But, if the luxury of walking it with
stick and knapsack is denied us, and we must needs see it by motor-car,
we cannot fail to make one observation, that of the surprising variety
of natural scenery packed in so small a space. Between Land's End and
the Tweed the eye and the imagination have encountered every form of the
picturesque. In an area some three hundred and fifty miles long by three
hundred broad are contained the ruggedness of Cornwall, the idyllic
softness of Devon, the dreamy solitudes of the South Downs, with their
billowy, chalky contours, the agricultural fertility of Kent and
Middlesex, the romantic woodlands and hilly pastures of Surrey, the
melancholy fens of Lincolnshire, the broad, bosky levels of the
midlands, the sudden wildness of Wales, with her mountains and