A Walk from London to John O'Groat's: With Notes by the WayBurritt, Elihu
History
A Walk from London to John O'Groat's: With Notes by the Way
Burritt, Elihu
Agriculture -- Great Britain; England -- Description and travel
But not so of the English country inn. It comes out into the
foreground of a thousand interesting histories and pictures of
common life. In them it has an individuality as marked as the
parish church, couchante in its wide-rimmed nest of grave stones; as
marked in unique architecture, location, and surroundings. In none
of these features will you find two alike, if you travel from one
end of the country to the other; especially among those a century
old. You might as well mistake one of the living animals for the
other, as to mistake "The Blue Boar" for "The Red Lion." They
differ as much from each other in general make and aspect as do
their nominal prototypes. To give every one of their thousands "a
local habitation and a name" of striking distinctness, has required
an ingenuity which has produced many interesting feats of house-
building and nomenclature. Both these departments of genius figure
largely in the poetry and classics of the institution, with which
the reading million of America have been familiar from youth up.
And when any of them come to travel in England, it will greatly
enhance their enjoyment to find that the pictures they have admired
and the descriptions they have read of the famous country inn have
been true to the very life and letter. All its salient features
they recognise at once, and are ready to exclaim, "How natural!"
meaning by that, how true is the original to the picture which they
have seen so frequently. If they go far enough, they will find the
very original of every one of the hundred pictures they have seen,
painted by pen or pencil. They will find that all of them have been
true copies from nature. Here is the portly-looking, well-to-do,
two-story tavern, standing out with its comfortable, cream-colored
face broadside to the street. It is represented in the old
engraving with a coach-and-four drawn up before the door, surrounded
by a crowd of spectators and passengers, some descending and
ascending on ladders over the forward wheels; some looking with
admiration at the scarlet coats of the pursy and consequential
driver and guard; some exchanging greetings, others farewell
salutations; ostlers in long waistcoats, plush or fustian shorts,
and yellow leggings, standing bareheaded with watering-pails at the
"'osses' 'eads;" trunks great and small going up and down; village
boys in high excitement; village grandfathers looking very animated;
the landlord, burly, bland, and happy, with a face as rotund and
genial as the full moon shining upon the scene; and those round,
rosy, sunny, laughing faces peering out of the windows with
delightful wonderment and exhilaration, winked at by the driver, and
saluted with a graceful motion of his whip-handle in recognition of
the barmaid, chambermaid, and all the other maids of the house. The
coach, with all its picturesque appointments, its four-in-hand, the
stirring heraldry of its horn coming down the road, its rattling
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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