and wished to take their ease therein after the dangers and hardships of the day.  Lord Beaconsfield, in his novel Tancred, vividly describes the busy scene at a country hostelry in the busy coaching days.  The host, who is always “smiling,” conveys the pleasing intelligence to the passengers:  “’The coach stops here half an hour, gentlemen:  dinner quite ready.’  ’Tis a delightful sound.  And what a dinner!  What a profusion of substantial delicacies!  What mighty and iris-tinted rounds of beef!  What vast and marble-veined ribs!  What gelatinous veal pies!  What colossal hams!  These are evidently prize cheeses!  And how invigorating is the perfume of those various and variegated pickles.  Then the bustle emulating the plenty; the ringing of bells, the clash of thoroughfare, the summoning of ubiquitous waiters, and the all-pervading feeling of omnipotence from the guests, who order what they please to the landlord, who can produce and execute everything they can desire.  ’Tis a wondrous sight!”

[Illustration:  The Shoulder of Mutton Inn, King’s Lynn]

And then how picturesque these old inns are, with their swinging signs, the pump and horse-trough before the door, a towering elm or poplar overshadowing the inn, and round it and on each side of the entrance are seats, with rustics sitting on them.  The old house has picturesque gables and a tiled roof mellowed by age, with moss and lichen growing on it, and the windows are latticed.  A porch protects the door, and over it and up the walls are growing old-fashioned climbing rose trees.  Morland loved to paint the exteriors of inns quite as much as he did to frequent their interiors, and has left us many a wondrous drawing of their beauties.  The interior is no less picturesque, with its open ingle-nook, its high-backed settles, its brick floor, its pots and pans, its pewter and brass utensils.  Our artist has drawn for us many beautiful examples of old inns, which we shall visit presently and try to learn something of their old-world charm.  He has only just been in time to sketch them, as they are fast disappearing.  It is astonishing how many noted inns in London and the suburbs have vanished during the last twenty or thirty years.

Let us glance at a few of the great Southwark inns.  The old “Tabard,” from which Chaucer’s pilgrims started on their memorable journey, was destroyed by a great fire in 1676, rebuilt in the old fashion, and continued until 1875, when it had to make way for a modern “old Tabard” and some hop merchant’s offices.  This and many other inns had galleries running round the yard, or at one end of it, and this yard was a busy place, frequented not only by travellers in coach or saddle, but by poor players and mountebanks, who set up their stage for the entertainment of spectators who hung over the galleries or from their rooms watched the performance.  The model of an inn-yard was the first germ of theatrical architecture.  The “White Hart” in