den at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions
presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing
before it by torchlight. We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony
morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the
unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the
present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging
about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart
of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman
will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which
that post-horse will tread on his conductor's toes. Over and above
which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him,
will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner
incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part. With
such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this
Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was
full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-
horse,--though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my
fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much
of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the
jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and
mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed
his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and
punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean
houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all
parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host
was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames,
altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on
perches. Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at
supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity
of his position, and instantly disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an
attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my
frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five
times by the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I
began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was