INNS.

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Whate'er his fortunes may have been,
Must sigh to think how oft he 's found
Life's warmest welcome at an inn.

SHENSTONE.

HE old, legitimate, delightful idea of an Inn is becoming obsolete; like so many other tradi

tional blessings, it has been sacrificed to the genius of locomotion. The rapidity with which distance is consumed obviates the need that so long existed of by-way retreats and halting-places. A hearty meal or a few hours' sleep, caught between the arrival of the trains, is all the railway traveller requires; and the modern habit of moving in caravans has infinitely lessened the romantic probabilities and comfortable realities of a journey: the rural alehouse and picturesque hostel now exist chiefly in the domain of memory; crowds, haste, and ostentation triumph here over privacy and rational enjoyment, as in nearly all the arrangements of modern society. Old Walton would discover now but few of the secluded inns that refreshed him on his piscatorial excursions; the ancient ballads on the wall have given place to French paper; the scent of lavender no longer makes the linen fragrant; instead of the crackle of the open wood-fire, we have the dingy coal-smoke, and exhalations of a stove; and green

blinds usurp the place of the snowy curtains. Not only these material details, but the social character of the inn, is sadly changed. Few hosts can find time to gossip; the clubs have withdrawn the wits; the excitement of a stage-coach arrival is no more; and a poet might travel a thousand leagues without finding a romantic "maid of the inn," such as Southey has immortalized. Jollity, freedom, and comfort are no longer inevitably associated with the name; the world has become a vast procession that scorns to linger on its route, and has almost forgotten how to enjoy. Thanks, however, to the conservative spell of literature, we can yet appreciate, in imagination, at least, the good old English inn. Goldsmith's Village Alehouse has daguerreotyped its humble species, while Dr. Johnson's evenings at the Mitre keep vivid the charm of its metropolitan fame. Indeed, it is quite impossible to imagine what British authors would have done without the solace and inspiration of the inn. Addison fled thither from domestic annoyance; Dryden's chair at Will's was an oracular throne; when hard pressed, Steele and Savage sought refuge in a tavern and wrote pamphlets for a dinner; Farquhar found there his best comic material; Sterne opens his " Sentimental Journey" with his landlord, Monsieur Dessein, Calais, and his inn-yard; Shenstone confessed he found "life's warmest welcome at an inn;" Sheridan's convivial brilliancy shone there with peculiar lustre; Hazlitt relished Congreve anew reading him in the shady windows of a village inn after a long walk; even an old Almanac, or Annual Register, will acquire an interest under such circumstances; and a dog-eared copy of the "Seasons" found in such a place induced Coleridge to exclaim, "This is fame!"

while Byron exulted when informed that a well-thumbed volume of the “English Bards" had been seen soon after its publication, at a little hostel in Albany. Elia's quaint anecdote of the Quakers when they all eat supper without paying for it, and Irving's "Stout Gentleman," are incidents which could only have been suggested by a country inn; and as to the novelists, from Smollett and Fielding to Scott and Dickens, the most characteristic scenes occur on this vantage-ground, where the strict unities of life are temporarily discarded, and its zest miraculously quickened by fatigue, hunger, a kind of infinite possibility of events, a singular mood of adventure and pastime, nowhere else in civilized lands so readily induced. It is, therefore, by instinct that these enchanting chroniclers lead us thither, from old Chaucer to our own Longfellow. Gil Blas acquired his first lesson in a knowledge of the world, by his encounter with the parasite at the inn of Panafleur; and Don Quixote's enthusiasm always reaches a climax at these places of way-side sojourn. The Black Bull, at Islington, is said to have been Sir Walter Raleigh's mansion; Dolly's Chop-House is dear to authors for the sake of Goldsmith and his friends, who used to go there on their way to and from Paternoster Row. At the Salutation and Cat, Smithfield, Coleridge and Lamb held memorable converse; and Steele often dated his "Tatlers" from the Trumpet. How appropriate for Voltaire to have lodged, in London, at the White Peruke! Spenser died at an inn in King Street, Westminster, on his return from Ireland. At the Red Horse, Stratford, is the "Irving room," precious to the American traveller; and how renowned have sweet Anne Page and jolly Falstaff made the very name of