But that matters little to the literary pilgrims in general, or to the American section of them in particular, who flock to Tewkesbury for sake of that very rare hero, John Halifax, whose like, one fears, never walked this imperfect earth of ours. He is, in short, a lady novelist’s hero, and all such, whether they be the military heroes of Ouida, with the physique of Greek gods, and queer morals, or the never-say-“damn” young men of the opposite extreme, have few points of contact with human beings. John Halifax, however, has a brother in fiction, and may be found in Mr. Thomas Hardy’s _Mayor of Casterbridge_, where he masquerades as a Scot, under the alias of “Donald Farfrae.” He and Angel Clare, of _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, are rivals for the distinction of being the least natural men among all Mr. Hardy’s characters. Donald is not quite the perfect gentle knight of Miss Mulock’s tale, but the same blood runs in the veins of either. When the author of _John Halifax, Gentleman_, who had many years before become Mrs. Craik, died, in 1887, a monument was fittingly erected to her memory in Tewkesbury Abbey Church, hard by the home of her hero. [Illustration: THE “BELL,” TEWKESBURY.] The “Bell” inn is a beautiful old building, of strongly contrasted very white plaster and very black timbers. A blue and gold bell hangs out as a sign in front. At the left-hand side an addition has quite recently been made (not included in the illustration) to provide a billiard-room and additional bedrooms. [Illustration: THE “WHEATSHEAF,” TEWKESBURY.] For the rest, Tewkesbury is a town full of ancient buildings, built in those dark times of the warring Roses, when men were foolish enough to fight--and to die and to lose all--for their principles. Savage, barbaric times, happily gone for ever, to give place to the era of argument and the amateur lawyer! In our own age you do not go forth and kill or be killed, but simply “passively resist” and await the advent of the bailiffs coming to distrain for the amount of your unpaid rates and taxes, confident that, in any change of government, your party will in its turn be able to enact the petty tyrant. In those times, when men fought well, they built with equal sturdiness, and the memory of their deeds beside the Avon meadows, in the bloody Battle of Tewkesbury of 1471, survives, side by side with the fine black-and-white timbered houses they designed and framed, and will survive centuries yet. Tewkesbury is a town of inns. The “Hop Pole,” among the largest of them, is a Dickensian inn, and so treated of in another chapter; but besides it you have the great red-brick Georgian “Swan,” typically a coaching hostelry, that is not quite sure of the titles “inn,” “hotel,” or “tavern,” and so, to be certain, calls itself, in the boldest of lettering, “Swan Hotel, Inn, and Tavern,” and thus has it all ways. [Illustration: YARD OF THE “WHITE HORSE,” MAIDEN NEWTON.] [Illustration: THE “WHITE HORSE,” MAIDEN NEWTON.]