olored
face broadside to the street. It is represented in the old
engraving with a coach-and-four drawn up before the door, surrounded
by a crowd of spectators and passengers, some descending and
ascending on ladders over the forward wheels; some looking with
admiration at the scarlet coats of the pursy and consequential
driver and guard; some exchanging greetings, others farewell
salutations; ostlers in long waistcoats, plush or fustian shorts,
and yellow leggings, standing bareheaded with watering-pails at the
"'osses' 'eads;" trunks great and small going up and down; village
boys in high excitement; village grandfathers looking very animated;
the landlord, burly, bland, and happy, with a face as rotund and
genial as the full moon shining upon the scene; and those round,
rosy, sunny, laughing faces peering out of the windows with
delightful wonderment and exhilaration, winked at by the driver, and
saluted with a graceful motion of his whip-handle in recognition of
the barmaid, chambermaid, and all the other maids of the house. The
coach, with all its picturesque appointments, its four-in-hand, the
stirring heraldry of its horn coming down the road, its rattling
wheels, the life and stir aroused and moved in its wake,--all this
has gone from the presence of a higher civilisation. It will never
re-appear in future pictures of actual life in England. It is all
gone where the hedges and hedge-row trees will probably go in their
turn. But the same village inn remains, and can be as easily
recognised as a widow in weeds, who still wears a hopeful face, and
makes the best of her bereavement.

But that humbler type of hostelry so often represented in sketches
of English rural life and scenery--the little, cozy, one-story,
wayside, or hamlet inn, with its thatched roof, checker-work window,
low door, and with a loaded hay-cart standing in front of it, while
the driver, in his round, wool hat, and in his smock-frock, is
drinking at a pewter mug of beer, with one hand on his horse's neck-
-this the hand of modern improvements has not yet reached. This may
be found still in a thousand villages and hamlets, surrounded with
all its rural associations; the green, the geese, and gray donkeys
feeding side by side; low-jointed cottages, with long, sloping roofs
greened over with moss or grass, and other objects usually shadowed
dimly in the background of the picture. It is these quiet hamlets
and houses in the still depths of