The Holyhead Road, rich in memories of Dean Swift travelling to and from Ireland, has, in the “Talbot” inn at Towcester, a house associated with him. The “Talbot,” the property of the Sponne Charity since 1440, was sold about 1895 to a firm of brewers, and a chair, traditionally said to have been used by the Dean, was at the same time removed to the Town Hall, where, in the offices of the solicitor to the feoffees of the Charity, it remains. It will be observed that the chair was of a considerable age, even in Swift’s time. An ancient fragment of coloured glass, displaying the arms of William Sponne, remains in one of the windows of the “Talbot,” and on a pane of another may be seen scratched the words “Gilbert Gurney,” presumably the handiwork of Theodore Hook. The “Bear,” at Esher, properly the “Black Bear,” is an old coaching- and posting-house. Still you see, on the parapet, the effigies of two bears, squatting on their rumps and stroking their stomachs in a manner strongly suggestive of repletion or indigestion. Sometimes the pilgrim of the roads finds them painted white, and on other occasions--in defiance of natural history--they have become pink; all according to the taste and fancy of the landlord for the time being. Whoever, that was not suffering from delirium tremens, saw such a thing as a pink bear? Among other, and less interesting, relics in the entrance-hall of this house, the visitor’s attention is at once struck by a glass case containing a huge and clumsy pair of jack-boots closely resembling the type of foot-gear worn by Marlborough and his troopers in the long ago, at Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet. They are not, however, of so great an age as that, nor associated with warlike campaigns, for they were worn by the post-boy who, in 1848, drove Louis Philippe, the fugitive King of the French, to his refuge at neighbouring Claremont. [Illustration: BOOTS AT THE “BEAR,” ESHER.] Certainly unique is the “George and Dragon” inn at Dragon’s Green, between Shipley and Horsham, in Sussex. Dragon’s Green (which doubtless derives its name from the inn-sign) is among the tiniest of hamlets, and few are those wayfarers who find their way to it, unless indeed they have any particular business there. In fact, so out of the world is it that those who inquire for Dragon’s Green, even at Horsham, are like to ask many people before they happen upon any one who has ever heard of the place. But who should have any business, save curiosity, at Dragon’s Green, it is somewhat difficult to conceive. Since 1893, however, it has been the bourne of those curiosity-mongers who have by chance heard of the tombstone erected by the roadside there, in the front garden of the inn. To the stranger who has never heard of this oddity, and comes unexpectedly upon it, the sight of a solemn white marble cross in a place so generally associated with conviviality is nothing less than startling. The epitaph upon it reads: