The great “Lion” inn on Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury, forms the scene of one of De Quincey’s mystical rhapsodies. It is the house to which he came in 1802, when, as a youth, he was setting forth in his unpractical way for London. He had walked in from Oswestry, reaching Shrewsbury two hours after nightfall. Innkeepers in those times knew little of pedestrians who footed it for pleasure, and classed all who walked when they might have rode as tramps. Therefore, it will be allowed that De Quincey timed his arrival well, at an hour when dusty feet are not so easily seen. However, had his shoes been noticed, he was ready with a defence, for he came to the “Lion” as a passenger already booked to London by the Mail. An Oswestry friend had performed that service for him, and here he was come to await the arrival of that conveyance. “This character,” he says, “at once installed me as rightfully a guest of the inn, however profligate a life I might have previously led as a pedestrian. Accordingly I was received with special courtesy, and, it so happened, with something even like pomp. Four wax-lights carried before me by obedient mutes, these were but ordinary honours, meant (as old experience had instructed me) for the first engineering step towards effecting a lodgment upon the stranger’s purse. In fact, the wax-lights are used by innkeepers, both abroad and at home, to ‘try the range of their guns.’ If the stranger submits quietly, as a good anti-pedestrian ought surely to do, and fires no counter-gun by way of protest, then he is recognised at once as passively within range, and amenable to orders. I have always looked upon this fine of 5_s._ or 7_s._ (for wax that you do not absolutely need) as a sort of inaugural _honorarium_ entrance-money, what in jails used to be known as _smart_ money, proclaiming me to be a man _comme il faut_, and no toll in this world of tolls do I pay so cheerfully. This, meantime, as I have said, was too customary a form to confer much distinction. The wax-lights, to use the magnificent Grecian phrase επομπ ευε moved pompously before me, as the holy-holy fire (the inextinguishable fire and its golden hearth) moved before Cæsar _semper_ Augustus, when he made his official or ceremonial _avatars_. Yet still this moved along the ancient channels of glorification: it rolled along ancient grooves--I might say, indeed, like one of the twelve Cæsars when dying, _Ut puto, Deus fio_ (It’s my private opinion that at this very moment I am turning into a god), but still the metamorphosis was not complete. _That_ was accomplished when I stepped into the sumptuous room allotted to me. It was a ball-room of noble proportions--lighted, if I chose to issue orders, by three gorgeous chandeliers, not basely wrapped up in paper, but sparkling through all their thickets of crystal branches, and flashing back the soft rays of my tall waxen lights. There were, moreover, two orchestras, which money would have filled within thirty minutes.