land, have had their taverns from time
immemorial; but they are all kept in the background of human life.
They do not come out in contemporaneous history with any
definiteness; not even accidentally. If a king is murdered in one
of them, or if it is the theatre of the most thrilling romance of
love, you do not know whether it is a building of stone, brick, or
wood; whether it is one, two, or three stories in height. No
outlines nor aspects are given you to help to fill up a rational
picture of it. Neither the landlord nor the landlady is drawn as a
representative man or woman. Either might be mistaken for a guest
in their own house, if seen in hat or bonnet by a stranger.

But not so of the English country inn. It comes out into the
foreground of a thousand interesting histories 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 Red 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 institution, 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 find the
very original of every one of the hundred pictures they have seen,
painted by pen or pencil. They will find that all of them have been
true copies from nature. Here is the portly-looking, well-to-do,
two-story tavern, standing out with its comfortable, cream-c