From Greta Bridge Dickens proceeded to Barnard Castle, where he and Phiz stayed, as a centre whence to explore Bowes, that bleak and stony-faced little town where he found “Dotheboys Hall,” and made it and Shaw, the schoolmaster, the centre of his romance. The “Unicorn” inn at Bowes is pointed out as the place where the novelist met Shaw, afterwards drawing the character of “Squeers” from his peculiarities. The rights and the wrongs of the Yorkshire schools, and the indictment of them that Dickens drew, form still a vexed question. Local opinion is by no means altogether amiably disposed towards the memory of Dickens in this matter; and although those schools were gravely mismanaged, we must not lose sight of the fact that this expedition undertaken by Dickens was largely a pilgrimage of passion, in which he looked to find scandals, and did so find them. To what extent, for the sake of his “novel with a purpose,” he dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of the wrongs he found must ever be a subject for controversy. The course of _Nicholas Nickleby_ brings us, in Chapter XXII., to the long tramp undertaken by Nicholas and Smike from London to Portsmouth, on “a cold, dry, foggy morning in early spring.” They made Godalming the first night, and “bargained for two humble beds.” The next evening saw them well beyond Petersfield, at a point fifty-eight miles from London, where the humble “Coach and Horses” inn stands by the wayside, and is perhaps the inn referred to by Dickens. The matter is doubtful, because, although the story was written in 1838, when the existing road along the shoulder of the downs at this point had been constructed, with the present “Coach and Horses” beside it, replacing the older inn and the original track that still goes winding obscurely along in the bottom, it is extremely likely that Dickens described the spot from his childish memories of years before, when, as a little boy, he had been brought up the road with the Dickens family, on their removal from Landport. At that time the way was along the hollow, where the “Bottom” inn, or “Gravel Hill” inn, then stood, in receipt of custom. The house stands yet, and is now a gamekeeper’s cottage. [Illustration: THE “COACH AND HORSES,” NEAR PETERSFIELD.]