omen, the landlady and
the barmaid, who stood there chatting and surveying the street. Coming
from within the house, I had to call out a request for passage; it was
granted with all deliberation, and with not a syllable of apology. This
was the best "hotel" in a Sussex market town.

And the food. Here, beyond doubt, there is grave degeneracy. It is
impossible to suppose that the old travellers by coach were contented
with entertainment such as one gets nowadays at the table of a country
hotel. The cooking is wont to be wretched; the quality of the meat and
vegetables worse than mediocre. What! Shall one ask in vain at an
English inn for an honest chop or steak? Again and again has my appetite
been frustrated with an offer of mere sinew and scrag. At a hotel where
the charge for lunch was five shillings, I have been sickened with pulpy
potatoes and stringy cabbage. The very joint--ribs or sirloin, leg or
shoulder--is commonly a poor, underfed, sapless thing, scorched in an
oven; and as for the round of beef, it has as good as
disappeared--probably because it asks too much skill in the salting. Then
again one's breakfast bacon; what intolerable stuff, smelling of
saltpetre, has been set before me when I paid the price of the best
smoked Wiltshire! It would be mere indulgence of the spirit of grumbling
to talk about poisonous tea and washy coffee; every one knows that these
drinks cannot be had at public tables; but what if there be real reason
for discontent with one's pint of ale? Often, still, that draught from
the local brewery is sound and invigorating, but there are grievous
exceptions, and no doubt the tendency is here, as in other things--a
falling off, a carelessness, if not a calculating dishonesty. I foresee
the day when Englishmen will have forgotten how to brew beer; when one's
only safety will lie in the draught imported from Munich.

XVII.

I was taking a meal once at a London restaurant--not one of the great
eating-places to which men most resort, but a small establishment on the
same model in a quiet neighbourhood--when there entered, and sat down at
the next table, a young man of the working class, whose dress betokened
holiday. A glance told me that he felt anything but at ease; his mind
misgave him as he looked about the long room and at the table before him;
and when a waiter came to offer him the card, he stared blankly in
sheepish confusion. Some strange windfall, no doubt, ha