The history of the inns at which Pepys stayed would form an interesting subject of inquiry. Few men of his time were better informed than he on the subject of inns: large, small, dear, cheap, comfortable and uncomfortable: they are all set forth in detail in his _Diary_. He more than once patronised the “Red Lion” at Guildford, a far more important house then than now. At that time it possessed very fine and extensive orchards and gardens, and, according to Aubrey, could make up fifty beds, and owned stables for two hundred horses. Imagination can easily picture Mr. Pepys, during his stay in 1661, cutting asparagus for supper: “the best that ever I ate in my life.” Those gardens were long since abolished, and Market Street stands on the site of them. On June 10th, 1668, we find him sleeping at the “George,” Salisbury, in a silk bed. He notes that he had “very good diet, but very dear,” and had probably, overnight, when sleeping in that silk bed, been visited with gruesome thoughts of the bill to follow the luxury. The bill was, as he expressed it, “exorbitant.” Insatiable curiosity in that old Pepys. Something, too, of childlike wonder, infantile artlessness, and a fear of strange things, and the dark. His inquisitiveness took him to the lonely giant ramparts of Old Sarum, “prodigious, so as to fright me”; and thereabouts he and his party of three ladies riding pillion found, and stayed at, a rustic inn, where a pedlar was turned out of bed in order that our Samuel might turn in. The party found the beds “lousy.” Strangely enough, this was a discovery “which made us merry.” Every man to his taste in merriment. And so, enjoying the full savour of life, he goes his way, as appreciative of good music as of a good dinner, and a connoisseur alike of sermons and of a pretty face. Did he ever outlive his lusts, and know all things to be vanities, before his natural force had abated? or did the end surprise him in midst of his worldly activities? A transition from Pepys to Sir Roger de Coverley is easy and natural. The old servant in Sir Roger’s family, retiring from service and taking an inn, is one of Addison’s most pleasing pictures. To do honour to his master, the old retainer had Sir Roger’s portrait painted and hung it out as his sign, under the title of the “Knight’s Head.” As soon as Sir Roger was acquainted with it, finding that his servant’s indiscretion proceeded wholly from affection and good-will, he only told him that he made him too high a compliment; and when the fellow seemed to think that could hardly be, added, with a more decisive look, that it was too great an honour for any man under a duke; but told him, at the same time, that it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge of it. Accordingly, they got a painter, by the Knight’s directions, to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and, by a little aggravation of the features, to change it into the “Saracen’s Head.”