elancholy man
than change of aire and variety of places, to travel abroad and see
fashions. Leo Afer speakes of many of his countrymen so cured without
all other physick. No man, saith Lipsius, in an epistle to Phil.
Lanoius, a noble friend of his, now ready to make a voyage, can be such a
stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities,
towns, rivers, will not affect. For peregrination charms our senses with
such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that
never travelled, a kinde of prisoner, and pity his case, that from his
cradle to old age beholds the same still; insomuch that Rhasis doth not
only commend but enjoyn travell, and such variety of objects to a
melancholy man, and to lye in diverse innes, to be drawn into severall
companies. A good prospect alone will ease melancholy, as Gomesius
contends. The citizens of Barcino, saith he, are much delighted with
that pleasant prospect their city hath into the sea, which, like that of
old Athens, besides AEgina, Salamina, and other pleasant islands, had all
the variety of delicious objects; so are those Neapolitanes and
inhabitants of Genua, to see the ships, boats, and passengers go by, out
of their windows, their whole cities being sited on the side of an hill
like Pera by Constantinople. Yet these are too great a distance: some
are especially affected with such objects as be near, to see passengers
go by in some great road-way or boats in a river, _in subjectum forum
despicere_, to oversee a fair, a market-place, or out of a pleasant
window into some thoroughfare street to behold a continual concourse, a
promiscuous rout, coming and going."

Indifferent roads and uneasy carriages, riding post, and dread of
highwaymen, darkness or the inclemency of the seasons, led, as by a
direct consequence, to the construction of excellent inns in our island.
The superiority of our English hotels in the seventeenth century is thus
described by the most picturesque of modern historians:--"From a very
early period," says Mr. Macaulay, "the inns of England had been renowned.
Our first great poet had described the excellent accommodation which they
afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty
persons, with their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables
of the Tabard, in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines
such as drew the company to drink largely. Two hundred years later,
under the reign