dress; it is not a thin gloss of French politeness that a feather, blown the wrong way, will brush off. It is not a color; it is a quality. You see it breathe and move in her like a nature, not as an art. Let no American traveller fancy he has seen England if he has not seen the Landlady of the village inn. If he has to miss one, he had better give up his visit to the Crystal Palace, Stratford-upon-Avon, Abbottsford, or even the House of Lords, or Windsor itself. Neither is so perfectly and exclusively English as the mistress of "The Brindled Cow," in one of the rural counties of the kingdom. It would be necessary to coin a new word if one were sought to contain and convey the distinctive characteristic of inn-life in England. Perhaps _homefulness_ would do this best, as it would more fully than any other term describe the coziness, quiet, and comfort to be enjoyed at these places of entertainment. Not one in a hundred of them ever heard the sound of the hotel-going bell, as we hear it in America. You are not thundered up or down by a vociferous gong. Then there is no marching nor counter-marching of a long line of waiters in white jackets around the dinner table, laying down plate, knife, fork, and spoon with uniform step and motion, as if going through a dress-parade or a military drill. There is no bustle, no noise, no eager nor anxious look of served or servants. Every one is calm, collected, and comfortable. "The cares that infest the day" do not ride into the presence of that roast beef and plum pudding on the wrinkles of any man's forehead, however business affairs may go with him outside. No one is in a hurry to sit down or to arise from the table. The whole economy of the establishment is to make you as much at home as possible; to individualise you, as far as it can be done, in every department of personal comfort. You follow your own time and inclination, and eat and drink when and how you please, with others or alone. The congregate system is the exception, not the rule. It seldom ever obtains at breakfast or tea. In many cases you have a little round table all to yourself at these meals. But if there is a common table for half a dozen persons, the tea and toast and other eatables are never aggregated into a common stock. Each person if he is a single guest, has his own allotment, even to a separate tea-pot. The table d'hote, if there be one at all, is made up like a select dinner party, rather early in the morning. If the guests of the house are not directly invited, they are asked, in a tone of hospitality, if they will join in the social meal, the only one got up by the establishment at which the table is not mapped out in separate holdings, or little independencies of dishes, each bounded by the wants and capacities of the individual occupant.