The English Inn [antikvár]

T CHAPTER I in the yard ¦^O write of the English inn is almost to write of England itself, so closely is the inn woven with the daily life of men of every degree, and with the gradual development of our land. It is as familiar in the national consciousness as the oak and the ash and the village green and the church spire. It began when we began, for the nationhood of a country begins with its roads ; and though the birth of the English inn cannot be documented, we may say with certainty that when the first fifty miles of road was cut through England the first English inn was built. Once the roads were made, the face of England began to stir with life, and wherever this life moved the inn was there, throbbing with a turmoil of dialects and manners. Merchants, pilgrims, warriors, thieves, scholars, pedlars —all these made its custom then as their counterparts do to-day. As the people grew, the inn grew with them. Like our houses and our government, it has always reflected the temper and tastes of the time, and the old inns that remain to us are, in themselves and their accumulated story, far more valuable historical monuments than our castles and abbeys. For they are not relics ; they are current companions of the unbreaking pageant of the English people. They are as much a part of the social furniture of the Englishman as his home and his garden, for next to the home, no other institution has held such' continuous and intimate contact with him. The stereotyped testimonial in the Visitors' Book—" a 7