The circumstance that led to his being shown into the ball-room of the “Lion,” was that of the house being under repair. That room is still in existence, and a noble and impressive room it is, occupying the upper floor of a two-storeyed building, added to the back of the older house perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago. Lofty, as he describes it, and lighted by tall windows, the feature of the two music-galleries and the chandeliers are still there, together with the supper-room at one end divided off from the greater saloon, and therefore disproportionately lofty. The ball-room is additionally lighted from the ceiling by a domed skylight. The moulded plaster decorations on walls and ceiling, in the Adams style--that style which so beautifully recast classic conventions--are exquisite, and even yet keep their delicate colouring, as do the emblematic figures of Music and Dancing painted on the door-panels. At rare intervals the room is used for its original purpose, and has a fine oak dancing-floor, but it more commonly serves, throughout the year, that of a commercial traveller’s stock-room. The way to this derelict haunt of eighteenth-century gaiety lies down the yard of the inn, and up a fine broad stone stairway, now much chipped, dirty, and neglected. On the ground floor is the billiard-room of the present day, formerly the coach dining-room. In crepuscular apartments adjoining, in these times given over to forgotten lumber, the curious may find the deserted kitchens of a bygone age, with the lifts and hatches to upper floors that once conveyed their abundant meals to a vanished generation of John Bulls. This portion of the house is seen to advantage at the end of the cobble-stoned yard, passing the old coach-office remaining there, unchanged, and proceeding to the other end, where the yard passes out into a steep and narrow lane called Stony Bank. Looking back, the great red-brick bulk of the ball-room, with the stone effigy of a lion on the parapet, is seen; the surrounding buildings giving a very powerful impression of the extensive business done here in days of old. [Illustration: YARD OF THE “OLD ANGEL,” BASINGSTOKE.] The “Old Angel,” Basingstoke, associated with Jane Austen’s early days, has for close upon thirty years ceased from being an inn, and is now quite unrecognisable as a modern “temperance hotel.” In the rear, approached nowadays through the yard of a livery-stable, the old Assembly Rooms where she danced with the _élite_ of the county families of her day, may with some difficulty be found by climbing a crazy staircase and pushing through the accumulated cobwebs of years. There, on a spacious upper floor, is the ball-room of a hundred years ago, now deserted, or but seldom used as a corn-store. The great “Royal George” hotel at Knutsford is associated with that finest of Mrs. Gaskell’s works, _Cranford_, and the “White Hart” at Whitchurch, on the Exeter Road, has reminiscences of Newman.