From Liverpool they walked out to the village of Bootle, where they looked about for an inn in which to pass the night:— “The only inn in the village is ‘The Bootle Hotel.’ We were afraid of that word ‘hotel,’ and, learning that there was another inn to be found a little further on, we proceeded; but this we found as much too mean as the other was too grand for us. We went on, therefore, and soon came to a third inn; but here we were more frightened than before, for the sign was ‘The Royal Waterloo Hotel.’” On the way home he passed a night at Shrewsbury, at the house of his father’s sister:— “In the evening my aunt showed us four or five letters addressed by John Howard to an uncle of my father’s, Mr. Symonds, a dissenting minister of Bedford. Mr. Howard was, at one time of his life, a member of his congregation. In one of these letters he mentions the pleasure he received, when at Rome, in seeing the monuments of ancient art. Foster, in his essay on ‘_Decision of Character_,’ mentions, as an instance of Howard’s unremitting perseverance in the attainment of one object, that he went to Rome without visiting its public buildings. I am not sorry that the author was mistaken. If Howard had done so, I think it would have been mere affectation. “At about four or five miles beyond Salop, we passed near to a curious old wall, which stands in a field to the right of the road. From the materials of which it is built, we judged it to be Roman masonry. We were all ignorant as to what building it belonged.”[60] He and his friend were out seven days, travelled 273 miles, and spent twenty-nine shillings each. Nevertheless he thought that these trips stood in need of justification, for his next entry is as follows:—