picturesque withal;
pleasant chestnut woods to ramble about, and a nice old inn in a wild
old wilderness of a garden that sloped down to the very river.

Strange perversity is it not; but how naturally one likes everything to
have some feature or other out of keeping with its intrinsic purport!
An inn like an old _chateau_, a chief-justice that could ride a
steeple-chase, a bishop that sings Moore's melodies, have an immense
attraction for me. They seem all, as it were, to say, "Don't fancy life
is a mere four-roomed house with a door in the middle. Don't imagine
that all is humdrum and routine and regular. Notwithstanding his wig
and stern black eyebrows, there is a touch of romance in that old
Chancellor's heart that you could n't beat out of it with his great
mace; and his Grace the Primate there has not forgotten what made
the poetry of his life in days before he ever dreamed of charges or
triennial visitations."

By these reflections I mean to convey that I am very fond of an inn that
does not look like an inn, but resembles a faded old country-house, or a
deserted convent, or a disabled mill. This Schaffhausen Gasthaus looked
like all three. It was the sort of place one might come to in a long
vacation, to live simply and to go early to bed, take monotony as a
tonic, and fancying unbroken quiet to be better than quinine.

"Ah!" thought I, "if it had not been for that confounded German, what a
paradise might not this have been to me! Down there in that garden, with
the din of the waterfall around us, walking under the old cherry-trees,
brushing our way through tangled sweetbriers, and arbutus, and laburnum,
what delicious nonsense might I not have poured into her ear! Ay! and
not unwillingly had she heard it. That something within that never
deceives, that little crimson heart within the rose of conscience, tells
me that she liked me, that she was attracted by what, if it were not for
shame, I would call the irresistible attractions of my nature; and
now this creature of braten and beetroot has spoiled all, jarred the
instrument and unstrung the chords that might have yielded me such sweet
music."

In thinking over the inadequacy of all human institutions, I have often
been struck by the fact that while the law gives the weak man a certain
measure of protection against the superior physical strength of the
powerful ruffian in the street, it affords none against the assaults of
the intellectual bully at a dinner