It was generally a broad-browed, solid, comfortable-looking house in the most central part of a country town. Not seldom the sign was taken from the armorial bearings of the local magnate. There were a Landlord and a Landlady, who came out bowing when the carriage drove up, and conducted the travellers to their rooms, while the "Imperials" were taken down from the roof of the carriage. (Could one buy an "Imperial" nowadays if one wanted it? The most recent reference to it which I can recall occurs in the first chapter of "Tom Brown's School Days.") Very often the rooms of the Inn were distinguished not by numbers, but by names or tokens derived from the situation, or the furniture, or from some famous traveller who had slept in them--the Bow Room, the Peacock Room, or the Wellington Room. The Landlord had generally been a butler, but sometimes a coachman. Anyhow, he and his wife had "lived in the best families" and "knew how things ought to be done." The furniture was solid, dark, and handsome--mahogany predominating, here and there relieved with rosewood. There was old silver on the table, and the walls were covered with sporting or coaching prints, views of neighbouring castles, and portraits of the Nobility whom the Landlord had served. The bedrooms were dark and stuffy beyond belief, with bedsteads like classic temples and deep feather-beds into which you sank as into a quicksand. The food was like the furniture, heavy and handsome. There was "gunpowder tea"--green if you asked for it,--luscious cream, and really new-laid eggs. The best bottle of claret which I ever encountered emerged, quite accidentally, from the cellar of a village Inn close to the confluence of the Greta and the Tees, in a district hallowed by the associations of Rokeby and Mr. Squeers. When, next morning, you had paid your bill--not, as a rule, a light one--the Landlord and Lady escorted you to the door, and politely expressed a hope that you would honour them on your return journey. Then "Hey, for the lilt of the London road!" and the Montfort Arms, or the Roebuck, or the Marquis of Granby, is only a pleasant memory of an unreturning day. What in the country was called an Inn was called in London a "Family Hotel." It was commonly found in Dover Street, or Albemarle Street, or Bolton Street, or some such byway of Piccadilly; and in its aspect, character, and general arrangement it was exactly like the country Inn, only of necessity darker, dingier, and more airless. Respectability, mahogany, and horse-hair held it in their iron grip. Here county families, coming up from the Drawing Room, or the Academy, or the Exhibition, or the Derby, spent cheerful weeks in summer. Here in the autumn they halted on their return from Doncaster or Aix. Here the boys slept on their way back to Eton or Cambridge; hither the subaltern returned, like a homing pigeon, from India or the Cape.