orner of the place, and the tone of the place! We might have lived
there ourselves. Positively, as we walk through it, we seem to recognise
localities like old friends.

"Boz," when he came to Ipswich, was no more than a humble reporter, on
special duty, living in a homely way enough. The "White Horse" was not
likely to put itself out for him, and he criticises it in his story,
after a fashion that seems rather bold. His description is certainly
unflattering:

"In the main street, on the left-hand side of the way"--observe how
minute Boz is in his topography--"a short distance after you have
passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an Inn
known far and wide by the appellation of 'The Great White Horse,'
rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious
animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane
cart horse, which is elevated above the principal door. The 'Great
White Horse' is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a
prize ox or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig--for its
_enormous size_. Never were there such labyrinths of _uncarpeted
passages_, such clusters of _mouldy_, _badly-lighted rooms_, such huge
numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any other
roof, as are collected between the four walls of this overgrown
Tavern."

Boz cannot give the accommodation a good word, for he calls the
Pickwickian room "a large, badly furnished apartment, with _a dirty
grate_ in which a small fire was making a wretched attempt to be
cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the dispiriting influence of the
place." The dinner, too, seems to have been as bad, for a _bit of fish_
and a steak took one hour to get ready, with "_a bottle of the worst
possible port_, _at the highest possible price_." Depreciation of a
hostelry could not be more damaging. Again, Mr. Pickwick's bedroom is
described as a sort of surprise, being "a more comfortable-looking
apartment that his short experience of the accommodation of the Great
White House had led him to expect."

Now this was bad enough, but his sketch of the waiter who received the
arriving party is worse:

"A corpulent man, with a fortnight's napkin under his arm and coeval
stockings."

There is something so hostile in all this that it certainly must have
come from a sense of bad reception. As we said, the young reporter was
likely