[Illustration:  The Dolphin Inn, Heigham, Norwich]

We will now start back to town by the coach which leaves the “Maid’s Head” (or did leave in 1762) at half-past eleven in the forenoon, and hope to arrive in London on the following day, and thence hasten southward to Canterbury.  Along this Dover road are some of the best inns in England:  the “Bull” at Dartford, with its galleried courtyard, once a pilgrims’ hostel; the “Bull” and “Victoria” at Rochester, reminiscent of Pickwick; the modern “Crown” that supplants a venerable inn where Henry VIII first beheld Anne of Cleves; the “White Hart”; and the “George,” where pilgrims stayed; and so on to Canterbury, a city of memories, which happily retains many features of old English life that have not altogether vanished.  Its grand cathedral, its churches, St. Augustine’s College, its quaint streets, like Butchery Lane, with their houses bending forward in a friendly manner to almost meet each other, as well as its old inns, like the “Falstaff” in High Street, near West Gate, standing on the site of a pilgrims’ inn, with its sign showing the valiant and portly knight, and supported by elaborate ironwork, its tiled roof and picturesque front, all combine to make Canterbury as charming a place of modern pilgrimage as it was attractive to the pilgrims of another sort who frequented its inns in days of yore.

[Illustration:  Shield and Monogram on doorway of the Dolphin Inn, Heigham]

[Illustration:  Staircase Newel at the Dolphin Inn.  From Old Oak Furniture, by Fred Roe]

And now we will discard the cumbersome old coaches and even the “Flying Machines,” and travel by another flying machine, an airship, landing where we will, wherever a pleasing inn attracts us.  At Glastonbury is the famous “George,” which has hardly changed its exterior since it was built by Abbot Selwood in 1475 for the accommodation of middle-class pilgrims, those of high degree being entertained at the abbot’s lodgings.  At Gloucester we find ourselves in the midst of memories of Roman, Saxon, and monastic days.  Here too are some famous inns, especially the quaint “New Inn,” in Northgate Street, a somewhat peculiar sign for a hostelry built (so it is said) for the use of pilgrims frequenting the shrine of Edward II in the cathedral.  It retains all its ancient medieval picturesqueness.  Here the old gallery which surrounded most of our inn-yards remains.  Carved beams and door-posts made of chestnut are seen everywhere, and at the corner of New Inn Lane is a very elaborate sculpture, the lower part of which represents the Virgin and Holy Child.  Here, in Hare Lane, is also a similar inn, the Old Raven Tavern, which has suffered much in the course of ages.  It was formerly built around a courtyard, but only one side of it is left.

[Illustration:  The Falstaff Inn, Canterbury]