There are some curious old rooms in the "George"; and it is astonishing the amount of space that is occupied by the attics, the timbers of which are enormous. Up in these dimly lighted wastes, report says that a cloth fair was held three times a year; and one may see the shaft or well up which the cloth was hauled from a side entrance in the street. The fair survives in a very modified form on one of the dates, May 1st. Upon the first floor, approached by a spiral stone staircase, is "Monmouth's room," the windows of which look up the road to Trowbridge. The open Tudor fireplace, the oaken beams and uneven floor, carries the mind back to the illustrious visitor who already was well aware that he was playing a losing game, and knew what he might expect from the unforgiving James. At the back of the old inn is the galleried yard, a very primitive one, now almost ruinous, with rooms, leading from the open corridors, tumbling to pieces, and floors unsafe to walk upon. Through the gaps may be seen the cellars below, containing three huge beer barrels, each of a thousand gallons' capacity. A fine stone fireplace in one will make a plunge below ere very long. But Somersetshire owns another remarkable fifteenth-century hostelry, the "George" at Glastonbury, in character entirely different from that at Norton St. Philip. The panelled and traceried Gothic stonework of the front, with its graceful bay-window rising to the roof, is perhaps more beautiful but not so quaint, nor has it that rugged vastness of the other which somehow impresses us with the rough-and-tumble hospitality of the Middle Ages. "Ye old Pilgrimme Inn," as the "George" at Glastonbury once was called, was built in Edward IV.'s reign, whose arms are displayed over the entrance gateway. Here is, or was, preserved the bedstead said to have been used by Henry VIII. when he paid a visit to the famous abbey. A mile or so before one gets to Norton, travelling up the main road from Frome, there is one of those exasperating signposts which are occasionally planted about the country. The road divides, and the sign points directly in the middle at a house between. It says "To Bath," and that is all; and people have to ask the way to that fashionable place at the aforesaid house. The inmate wearily came to the door. How many times had he been asked the same question! He was driven to desperation, and was going to invest in some black paint and a brush for his own as well as travellers' comfort. But how much worse when there is no habitation where to make inquiries! You are often led carefully up to a desolate spot, and then abandoned in the most heartless fashion. The road forks, and either there is no signpost, or the place you are nearing is not mentioned at all. Unless your intuitive perception is beyond the ordinary, you must either toss up for it, or sit down and wait peacefully until some one may chance to pass by. [Illustration: CHARTERHOUSE HINTON.] [Illustration: WELLOW MANOR-HOUSE.]