This horse was twenty-three years old, yet it went as fast as though all that tomfoolery men talk about progress were true, and as though things got better by the process of time.  It went so fast that one might imagine it at forty-six winning many races, and at eighty standing beyond all comparison or competition; and because it went so fast I went hammering right through the town of March before I had time to learn its name or to know whither I was driving; it whirled me past the houses and out into the country beyond; only when I had pulled up two miles beyond did I know what I had done and did I realise that I had missed for ever one of those pleasures which, fleeting as they are, are all that is to be discovered in human life.  It went so fast, that before I knew what had happened the Griffin had flashed by me and was gone.

* * * * *

Yet I will affirm with the tongue of faith that it is the noblest house of call in the Fens.

* * * * *

It is better to believe than to handle or to see.  I will affirm with the tongue of faith that the Griffin is, as it were, the captain and chief of these plains, and has just managed to touch perfection in all the qualities that an inn should achieve.  I am speaking not of what I know by the doubtful light of physical experience, but of what I have seen with the inward eye and felt by something that transcends gross taste and touch.

Low rooms of my repose!  Beams of comfort and great age; drowsy and inhabiting fires; ingle-nooks made for companionship.  You also, beer much better, much more soft, than the beer of lesser towns; beans, bacon, and chicken cooked to the very limit of excellence; port drawn from barrels which the simple Portuguese had sent to Lynn over the cloud-shadowed sea, and honourable Lynn without admixture had sent upon a cart to you, port undefined, port homogeneous, entirely made of wine:  you also beds!  Wooden beds with curtains around them, feathers for sleeping on, and every decent thing which the accursed would attempt to destroy; candles (I trust)—­and trust is more perfect than proof—­bread made (if it be possible) out of English wheat; milk drawn most certainly from English cows, and butter worthy of the pastures of England all around.  Oh, glory to the Fens, Griffin, it shall not be said that I have not enjoyed you!

* * * * *

There is a modern habit, I know, of gloom, and men without faith upon every side recount the things that they have not enjoyed.  For my part I will yield to no such habit.  I will consider that I have more perfectly tasted in the mind that which may have been denied to my mere body, and I will produce for myself and others a greater pleasure than any pleasure of the sense.  I will do what the poets and the prophets have always done, and satisfy myself with vision, and (who knows?) perhaps by this the Griffin of the Idea has been made a better thing (if that were possible!) than the Griffin as it is—­as it materially stands in this evil and uncertain world.