which was an inscription,—"This is the Inn where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine-and-twenty pilgrims lay on their journey to Canterbury, anno 1383." In 1673, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, this cross beam, with its supporting posts, was taken down, but the inscription, after the rebuilding, was painted over the gateway, where it remained until 1813, when it was erased. The street front of the inn was consumed in the great fire of Southwark, 1676, along with 600 other houses, but was immediately rebuilt, presumably in facsimile of the original, with its courtyard, galleries, pilgrims' hall, and quaint old sleeping-rooms, and it is possible that some parts which escaped the fire may have been a portion of the Tabard, where Chaucer sat as "a chiel takin' notes," and where the pretty prioress, the wife of Bath, the knight and the squire, and the Sumpnour and the Pardoner chatted and laughed and flirted; certainly the courtyard was the identical spot where the merry party mounted their nags and palfreys, to ride forth along the "Pilgrims' Road" to St. Thomas's shrine. The pilgrims' room was divided into three apartments; on its walls was formerly a fragment of tapestry, representing a procession of pilgrims, which afterwards disappeared. After the fire, says Aubrey, "the ignorant landlord or tenant, instead of the ancient sign, put up the Talbot or Dog." Truly he must have been ignorant or destitute of veneration for antiquity or poetical feeling, to commit such an act of vandalism, and his successors cannot have been much better not to have restored the old time-honoured designation. For all time will the name of Harry Bailly, the jovial landlord of the Tabard towards the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, be remembered. He was a notable burgess of Southwark, and evidently a popular character; he is supposed to be identical with Henry Tite Morton, who, in 1380, was assessed, with his wife Christiana, at 2s. to a subsidy, rented the customs of the borough in fee farm at £10 per annum; was bailiff to Southwark, whence his appellation, Henry le Bailly; represented the borough in the Parliament of Westminster, 50 Edward III., and in that of Gloucester 2 Richard II. A jolly fellow he seems to have been, well adapted for his profession:— "A seemly man our hoste was withall For to have been a Marshal in a Hall; A large man he was, with eyen steep, A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe: Bold of his speech and wise and well ytaught, And of manhood, him lacked righte naught; Eke thereto was he right a merry man And spake of mirth amonges ot'thing When than we hadden made our reckonings." It was in the merry spring time of the year 1383, as the inscription on the sign informs us— "Whenne that April with his showres sote The drought of March, hath pierced to the rote, And bathed every vein in such licour Of which virtue engendered is the flower,"