which he has perused.  But let him travel on the turnpike road through country towns and villages, and he will meet with names he never thought of before, mounted over the doors of some of the most comfortable and delightful houses of entertainment for man and beast that can be found in the world.  Here are a few that I have noticed:  “The Three Jolly Butchers,” “The Old Mash Tub,” “The Old Mermaid,” “The Old Malt Shovel,” “The Chequers,” “The Dog-in-Doublet,” “Bishop Boniface,” “The Spotted Cow,” “The Green Dragon,” “The Three Horseshoes,” “The Bird-in-Hand,” “The Spare Rib,” “The Old Cock,” “Pop goes the Weasel.”  There are wide spaces between these names which may be filled up from actual life with numbers of equal uniqueness.  But it is not in architecture nor in name that the country inn presents its most attractive characteristic.  These features merely specialise its outward corporeity.  The living, brightening, all-pervading soul of the establishment is the LANDLADY.  Let her name be written in capitals evermore.  There is nothing so naturally, speakingly, and gloriously English in the wide world as she.  It is doubtful if the nation is aware of this, but it is the fact.  Her English individuality stands out embonpoint, rosy, genial, self-complacent, calm, serene, happyfying, and happy.  She is the man and master of the house.  She permeates it with her rayful presence, and fills it with a pleasant morning in foggy and blue-spirited days.  She it is who greets the coming and speeds the parting guest with a grace which suns, with equal light and warmth, both remembrance and anticipation.  It is not put on like a Sunday dress; it is not a thin gloss of French politeness that a feather, blown the wrong way, will brush off.  It is not a color; it is a quality.  You see it breathe and move in her like a nature, not as an art.  Let no American traveller fancy he has seen England if he has not seen the Landlady of the village inn.  If he has to miss one, he had better give up his visit to the Crystal Palace, Stratford-upon-Avon, Abbottsford, or even the House of Lords, or Windsor itself.  Neither is so perfectly and exclusively English as the mistress of “The Brindled Cow,” in one of the rural counties of the kingdom.

It would be necessary to coin a new word if one were sought to contain and convey the distinctive characteristic of inn-life in England.  Perhaps homefulness would do this best, as it would more fully than any other term describe the coziness, quiet, and comfort to be enjoyed at these places of entertainment.  Not one in a hundred of them ever heard the sound of the hotel-going bell, as we hear it in America.  You are not thundered up or down by a vociferous gong.  Then there is no marching nor counter-marching of a long line of waiters in white jackets around the dinner table, laying down plate, knife, fork, and spoon with uniform step and motion, as if going through a dress-parade or a military drill.  There