country-house by the roadside. Shakespeare, who doubtless had many
opportunities of testing the comforts of the famous inns at Southwark,
makes Falstaff say: "Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?"; and
Shenstone wrote the well-known rhymes on a window of the old Red Lion
at Henley-on-Thames:--

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull road,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.

Fynes Morrison tells of the comforts of English inns even as early as
the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1617 he wrote:--

"The world affords not such inns as England hath, for as soon as a
passenger comes the servants run to him; one takes his horse and
walks him till he be cold, then rubs him and gives him meat; but
let the master look to this point. Another gives the traveller his
private chamber and kindles his fire, the third pulls off his
boots and makes them clean; then the host or hostess visits
him--if he will eat with the host--or at a common table it will be
4d. and 6d. If a gentleman has his own chamber, his ways are
consulted, and he has music, too, if he likes."

[Illustration: The Wheelwrights' Arms, Warwick]

The literature of England abounds in references to these ancient inns.
If Dr. Johnson, Addison, and Goldsmith were alive now, we should find
them chatting together at the Authors' Club, or the Savage, or the
Athenæum. There were no literary clubs in their days, and the public