When two Englishmen quarrel, the fray is carried on, and decided, rather by actions than by words; though loud and boisterous, they do not say much, and frequently repeat the same thing over and over again, always clinching it with an additional “G—­ d—­ you!” Their anger seems to overpower their utterance, and can vent only by coming to blows.

The landlady, who sat in the kitchen along with all this goodly company, was nevertheless well dressed, and a remarkably well-looking woman.  As soon as I had supped I hastened to bed, but could not sleep; my quondam companions, the colliers, made such a noise the whole night through.  In the morning, when I got up, there was not cue to be seen nor heard.

I was now only a few miles from Nottingham, where I arrived towards noon.

This, of all the towns I have yet seen, except London, seemed to me to be one of the best, and is undoubtedly the cleanest.  Everything here wore a modern appearance, and a large place in the centre, scarcely yielded to a London square in point of beauty.

From the town a charming footpath leads you across the meadows to the high-road, where there is a bridge over the Trent.  Not far from this bridge was an inn, where I dined, though I could get nothing but bread-and-butter, of which I desired to have a toast made.

Nottingham lies high, and made a beautiful appearance at a distance, with its neat high houses, red roofs, and its lofty steeples.  I have not seen so fine a prospect in any other town in England.

I now came through several villages, as Ruddington, Bradmore, and Buny, to Castol, where I stayed all night.

This whole afternoon I heard the ringing of bells in many of the villages.  Probably it is some holiday which they thus celebrate.  It was cloudy weather, and I felt myself not at all well, and in these circumstances this ringing discomposed me still more, and made me at length quite low-spirited and melancholy.

At Castol there were three inns close to each other, in which, to judge only from the outside of the houses, little but poverty was to be expected.  In the one at which I at length stopped there was only a landlady, a sick butcher, and a sick carter, both of whom had come to stay the night.  This assemblage of sick persons gave me the idea of an hospital, and depressed me still more.  I felt some degree of fever, was very restless all night, and so I kept my bed very late the next morning, until the woman of the house came and aroused me by saying she had been uneasy on my account.  And now I formed the resolution to go to Leicester in the post-coach.

I was now only four miles from Loughborough, a small, and I think, not a very handsome town, where I arrived late at noon, and dined at the last inn on the road that leads to Leicester.  Here again, far beyond expectation, the people treated me like a gentleman, and let me dine in the parlour.