so unexpected: there is a wonderfully added charm about pleasures that are unanticipated. This is why it is so enjoyable to travel through a fresh country with all before you unknown and therefore pregnant with possibilities; the mind is thus kept ever in an agreeable state of expectancy, wondering what each new bend in the road may reveal; and what a special interest there lies in the little discoveries that one makes for oneself! Could a guide-book be produced giving particulars of all one would see on a tour, so that one would always know exactly what to expect everywhere, I make bold to say that a tour undertaken with such a perfect companion would not be worth the taking!
But to get back to the "George" at Huntingdon. There, straight in front of us, stood a goodly portion of the ancient inn, unlike the exterior, happily unmodernised—a fact for all lovers of the beautiful to be deeply grateful for. This bit of building retained its ancient gallery, reached by an outside stairway (so familiar in old prints and drawings of such inns), and in the great tiled roof above, set all by itself in a projecting gable, was the hotel clock, that doubtless erst did duty to show the time to a generation of road-travellers in the days before the despotic reign of the steam-horse, when corn and hay, not coal and coke, sustained the motive power.
This unchanged corner of a famous old coaching hostelry spoke plainly of the picturesque past. It was not a painter's dream, it was a reality! It suggested bits from Pickwick, and sundry scenes from novels of the out-of-date romantic school.
