that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank,—­except one good-humoured gentleman, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it familiarly as “Blank;” observing, at breakfast, “Blank looks pretty tall this morning;” or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether there warn’t some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would make out the top of Blank in a couple of hours from first start—­now!

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie.  It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort,—­an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the table.  After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as before.  At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra.  Human provision could not have foreseen the result—­but the waiter mended the pie.  With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal.  I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window.  Here I was driven back by stress of weather.  Arrived at my winter-quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall.  A great annual Miners’ Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight.  We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses.  If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post-horse will tread on his conductor’s toes.  Over and above which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor’s part.  With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable