After South Newington we had another long stretch of very lonely road, but charming on account of its loneliness; the country we passed through was elevated and undulating and afforded us many fine and far-reaching prospects. There were wide margins of grass by the sides of our road, so wide in places as to be almost fields; on these multitudes of silly sheep were grazing--I say silly, for when they heard the car approaching they would quietly cross the road in front of us, first one, then another, then the whole flock in slow procession, causing us to make many a stop, for sheep and cattle are lords of the road; they used even to stop a king's mails in the days of yore. These sheep really seemed to do it out of sheer perversity, and it was the more provoking as the otherwise forsaken road was so tempting to speed along, and occasionally, when all is safe, a turn of speed is a very inspiriting thing; it wipes the cobwebs from the brain, it drives the good fresh air into the lungs, it stimulates the mind, and braces the body. Not that I am an advocate of speed, except as a rare indulgence on lonely roads when there can be no hurt in it, and so you may test the mettle of your car. Then we came to the old mail and turnpike highway from London to Birmingham; this crossed our road at a lonely, bleak, and elevated spot close to which formerly stood the once flourishing "Chapel House Inn"; the building still stands there indeed, but it has been converted into a residence: an inn of wide renown in the old road-travelling days, where the Birmingham coaches changed horses and stopped whilst their passengers dined; an inn far famous for its fare and its wines--so good were the latter that it has been said, and I see no reason to doubt the saying, that "there was a strong temptation to indulge in them which was rarely resisted, even the king's cellars could produce nothing better," and there over their wines our ancestors doubtless made merry as was their wont. At least they enjoyed their lives. It was to this inn that Dr. Johnson and Boswell came in a postchaise during the early summer of 1776, and it was then when posting across country that the former, lover of towns though he was, suddenly exclaimed, "Life has little better to offer than this." It was on the same day, whilst dining at the "Chapel House Inn," that the learned doctor delivered his much-quoted eulogy on inns: "There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern," declared he. "You are sure of a welcome, and the more noise you make, the more good things you call for, the more trouble you give, the welcomer you are. There is nothing that has been invented by man by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn." What road traveller will not re-echo those sentiments?--though I grieve for the one who can honestly say with Shenstone he has found his "warmest welcome at an inn," however warm the welcome at his inn may be.