lighted on a public house such as Walton
has described, where the brick floor was swept clean, where the walls
were stuck round with ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and
where a blazing fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh
from the neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At
the larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with silk,
choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was drunk in London.
[155] The innkeepers too, it was said, were not like other innkeepers.
On the Continent the landlord was the tyrant of those who crossed the
threshold. In England he was a servant. Never was an Englishman more
at home than when he took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who
might in their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in
the habit of passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring
house of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort
and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal perfection.
This feeling continued during many generations to be a national
peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long furnished matter to
our novelists and dramatists. Johnson declared that a tavern chair was
the throne of human felicity; and Shenstone gently complained that no
private roof, however friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as
that which was to be found at an inn.

Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and Whitehall in
the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels. Yet on the whole it
is certain that the improvement of our houses of public entertainment
has by no means kept pace with the improvement of our roads and of our
conveyances. Nor is this strange; for it is evident that, all other
circumstances being supposed equal, the inns will be best where the
means of locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the
less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable resting
places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a person who
came up to the capital from a remote county generally required, by the
way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for five or six nights. If he
were a great man, he expected the meals and lodging to be comfortable,
and even luxurious. At present we fly from York or Exeter to London by
the light of a single winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller
seldom interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and
ref