them many a million of sound, hearty men and women who take the seasons as they come, and profit by each in turn.  In its freedom from extremes, in its common clemency, even in its caprice, which at the worst time holds out hope, our island weather compares well with that of other lands.  Who enjoys the fine day of spring, summer, autumn, or winter so much as an Englishman?  His perpetual talk of the weather is testimony to his keen relish for most of what it offers him; in lands of blue monotony, even as where climatic conditions are plainly evil, such talk does not go on.  So, granting that we have bad days not a few, that the east wind takes us by the throat, that the mists get at our joints, that the sun hides his glory too often and too long, it is plain that the result of all comes to good, that it engenders a mood of zest under the most various aspects of heaven, keeps an edge on our appetite for open-air life.

I, of course, am one of the weaklings who, in grumbling at the weather, merely invite compassion.  July, this year, is clouded and windy, very cheerless even here in Devon; I fret and shiver and mutter to myself something about southern skies.  Pshaw!  Were I the average man of my years, I should be striding over Haldon, caring not a jot for the heavy sky, finding a score of compensations for the lack of sun.  Can I not have patience?  Do I not know that, some morning, the east will open like a bursting bud into warmth and splendour, and the azure depths above will have only the more solace for my starved anatomy because of this protracted disappointment?

XV.

I have been at the seaside—­enjoying it, yes, but in what a doddering, senile sort of way!  Is it I who used to drink the strong wind like wine, who ran exultingly along the wet sands and leapt from rock to rock, barefoot, on the slippery seaweed, who breasted the swelling breaker, and shouted with joy as it buried me in gleaming foam?  At the seaside I knew no such thing as bad weather; there were but changes of eager mood and full-blooded life.  Now, if the breeze blow too roughly, if there come a pelting shower, I must look for shelter, and sit with my cloak about me.  It is but a new reminder that I do best to stay at home, travelling only in reminiscence.

At Weymouth I enjoyed a hearty laugh, one of the good things not easy to get after middle age.  There was a notice of steamboats which ply along the coast, steamboats recommended to the public as being “replete with lavatories and a ladies’ saloon.”  Think how many people read this without a chuckle!

XVI.

In the last ten years I have seen a good deal of English inns in many parts of the country, and it astonishes me to find how bad they are.  Only once or twice have I chanced upon an inn (or, if you like, hotel) where I enjoyed any sort of comfort.  More often than not, even the beds are unsatisfactory—­either pretentiously huge and choked with drapery, or hard and thinly accoutred.  Furnishing is uniformly hideous, and there is either no attempt at ornament (the safest thing) or a villainous taste thrusts itself upon one at every turn.  The meals, in general, are coarse and poor in quality, and served with gross slovenliness.