rge stone quoins, and steps up to the doors.

The White Dragon, dating from the times of the Mortimer badge, was built
of creamy stone, and had an archway conducting the traveller into a
courtyard worthy of Chaucer, with ranges of galleries running round
it, the balustrades of dark carved oak suiting with the timbers of the
latticed window and gables, and with the noble outside stair at one
angle, by which they communicated with one another. To these beauties
the good Major was entirely insensible. He only sighed at the trouble it
gave his lame knee to mount the stair to the first storey, and desired
the execution of the landlord's barbarous design of knocking down the
street front to replace it with a plain, oblong assembly room, red brick
outside, and within, blue plaster, adorned with wreaths and bullocks'
faces in stucco.

Such were the sentiments of most of the burly squires who had ridden
in on the same errand, and throwing the reins to their grooms, likewise
climbed the stair to the club-room with its oriel looking over the
street. There too were several of the cathedral clergy, the rubicund
double-chinned face of the Canon in residence set off by a white,
cauliflower wig under a shovel hat, while the humbler minor canons (who
served likewise as curates to all the country round) only powdered their
own hair, and wore gowns and cassocks of quality very inferior to that
which adorned the portly person of their superior. His white bands were
of fine cambric, theirs of coarser linen; his stockings were of ribbed
silk, theirs of black worsted; his buckles of silver, theirs of steel;
and the line of demarcation was as strongly marked as that between the
neat, deferential tradesman, and the lawyer in his spruce snuff-coloured
coat, or the doctor, as black in hue as the clergy, though with a
secular cut, a smaller wig, and a gold-headed cane. Each had, as in duty
bound, ordered his pint of port or claret for the good of the house, and
it was well if these were not in the end greatly exceeded; and some had
lighted long clay pipes; but these were mostly of the secondary rank,
who sat at the table farthest from the window, and whose drink was a
measure of ale.

The letters had not yet been sorted, but the newspaper had been
brought in, and the Canon Boltby had possessed himself of it, and was
proclaiming scraps of intelligence about the King, Queen, and Sir
Robert Walpole, the character of Marshal Berwick, recently slain