I never
see the poor creatures in their bandaged heads and their flannel
gowns, enjoying their convalescence in the sunshine of those exterior
corridors, but I reckon the old corridors for as much as the young
doctors, in bringing them from convalescence into strength, and a new
fight with the bedevilments of the world.

What shall we say, too, of inn porches? Does anybody doubt their
fitness? Is there any question of the fact--with any person of
reasonably imaginative mood--that Falstaff and Nym and Bardolph, and the
rest, once lolled upon the benches of the porch that overhung the door
of the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap? Any question about a porch, and a
generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark--presided over by that wonderful
host who so quickened the story-telling humors of the Canterbury
pilgrims of Master Chaucer?

Then again, in our time, if one were to peel away the verandas and the
exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid
baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all
glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of
laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered vows
would be gone.

King David when he gave out to his son Solomon the designs for the
building of the Temple, included among the very first of them, (1 Chron.
XXVIII. 11) the "pattern of a porch." It is not, however, of porches
of shittim-wood and of gold, that I mean to talk just now--nor even of
those elaborate architectural features which will belong of necessity
to the entrance-way of every complete study of a country house. I plead
only for some little mantling hood about every exterior door-way,
however humble.

There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and
down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit
adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of
this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present
indecorous exposure of a wanton.

* * * * *

=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._=

From "Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare."

=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE'S STYLE.

Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey
his meaning to his auditors,--the common phraseology of his period.
But what a language was that! In its capacity for the varied and exact
expression of all moods of mind, all forms o