Το that order of persons, who are known by all the waiters and chambermaids in England as Commercial Gents. It is very likely that fat Joseph, who waits at the Star and Garter in Worcester, would ask a stranger, who was evidently a stranger, and a single man, if he would see the coffee or commercial room. one who was not au fait the question might be embarrassing. If he were shown to the latter, he would find three or four very buxom individuals, who seem to be well met, and who employ professional terms as unintelligible as the slang of St. Giles to Judge Broderip. Some very heavy drab great-coats hang upon pegs about the room. Some half dozen whips stand in the corner, and an amazing quantity of packages with oilcloth wrappers, are about the floor, the chairs, and even cumber the top of the old-fashioned sideboard. The commercial men eye the new comer with a great deal of curiosity, and perhaps, politely venture an inquiry as to what he may be in?" or if he came down in a gig?" If the stranger absurdly imagines himself insulted, and makes little or no reply, there is no appearance of affront on the part of his companions farther than will be manifested by rather more silence, and circumspection in their conversation. These Commercial Gents are each the agent of some importer or manufacturer. The packages are the samples of their goods; the whips are used in professional style to touch the really good horses they secure to ride after, in their easy gigs, from town to town, to secure orders. Unlike the system obtaining with us, of the country merchants going to town to purchase, in Britain, the town dealer sends an agent to the country to sell. These "gents," as Boots familiarly terms them, eat good dinners, and order their half-pint of port after it; and make up at least half of the custom of the country inns.* The hostess likes them, and always gives them a friendly word on their periodical visits, because they are regular customers; the waiter likes them because they send new travelers to the house; the Boots likes them, because they give him small jobs of packet carrying in the town; and the housemaid likes them, because they chuck her under the chin, and tell her she is the prettiest girl in the shire. The chambers in one of these old country inns, has those old-fashioned sort of comforts--the best comforts in the world-which are only to be found in our country in the houses of those who have been, these twenty years, grandfathers or grandmothers. They belong to times which have been gone a long reach of years, and in all the fast growing towns have been supplanted by more stylish, though less available comforts; but they linger still under the quaint gables, within the latticed casements, under the low, wainscotted ceiling of the old English country inn, with a congruity of aspect, that modern furnishings can in no way present. Beside, what glorious dreams come over a man's slumbers as he fancies himself in the chamber, nay, upon the very bedstead, that may have held some roistering cavalier of King Charles' time, as he slept away the fumes of his punch bowl? But this is not to our purpose. The bill is light; the hostess comes to the door to bid you good morning; Boots takes off his cap, and if you have favored him with an extra sixpence, has secured you a seat upon the box of the coach; the maid looks out from the balcony; the coachman gathers his reins; the porter says, "all right;" the grooms let go the horses' heads, and away all dashes, under the archway, and down the street; and the low shops, and the people looking, and the quaint houses all fleet by, like a flock of gulls to leeward. One may live at the inns of Glasgow and Edinburgh, than which there are no better in Great Britain, at a less rate than in English inns of the same pretensions; but, on the other hand, the country inns in Scotland, particularly those along the pleasure routes amid the Highlands, are more expensive than similar ones in the southern country. Wherever the English travel for pleasure, be it in Thibet, or over the sands of Suez, they scatter gold like dust. Deny them this privilege, and you deny them half the pleasure of their travel. Those who follow in their wake must look for the natural consequences of their extrava * It may be worth while to make a note of the amount of fees paid by these habitual inn-frequenters. Sixpence to waiter, the same to maid, and threepence to boots, is their minimum for two meals and a night, and their maximum two shillings to be divided by the corps servitorial. gance exorbitance limited only by positive refusal to comply with its demands. The beauties of Loch Lomond and of Loch Katrine, (which would be put to the blush, notwithstanding its fabled Ellen, by some half-dozen pools of water that lie sleeping among the green hills of New England,) are dear beauties, not only to the lover of nature, but to the lover of a round purse. The little inn, seated among the Trosachs, with its arbors of ivy and creepers, is a very cottage in the wood; but only in these outward features does the vraisemblance to natural simplicity hold good. For natural simplicity supposes nothing about waiters in black pantaloons, and white aprons, and gaiterboots, who demand half-a-crown for a bowl of milk, though you eat it with a wooden spoon, and half-a-crown more for a bed, though you sleep upon the floor, and half-a-crown more for servicemoney. And at beautiful Perth, lying in one of the sweetest valleys of Scotland, we remember to have paid a bill for wax lights, and parlor, and dinner, and wine, and the Sassenach servitors, such as would have made a fearful inroad into the dowry of the Fair Maid of Scott's romance. But to one wandering out of the great track of travel, as he may do here and there, sustenance will come at a cheaper rate. At a little inn, twelve miles north of Inverness, the capital of the Highlands, under the eaves of the castle where good King Duncan was taken off by Macbeth, we ate a supper of brown bread, and oatmeal cakes, and cold fowl, and boiled ham, and had a bed with clean white curtains, and coffee by sunrise, with a new-laid egg and a trench of bacon-all for a song. And not only this, but a thousand apologies from the good woman, because what was so good was not better. But in the progress of a few years, the railway will have laid its iron fingers on that retired heath, and in place of the low-porched cottage, will spring up a town hotel; and in place of the Celtic woman with her tartan turban and low charges, will be a lacquey in a white cravat, with extortionate demands. The Irish have the credit of being a hospitable people; perhaps it is the reason why Irish inns are so bad. In the country, particularly at the north, things will be found dirty about the inns, and attention bad. If the visitor finds two or three panes of glass gone from his chamber window, and dirty sheets upon his bed, he would do well to stuff his hat and coat through the broken glass, and slip quietly into bed in his pantaloons. For if he pulls the bell-rope, ten chances to one, it will not ring; and if it rings, ten chances to one, nobody will hear; and if a body hears, it is very problematical whether a body will answer; and if an answer, we defy Irish ingenuity to devise a plan which would better satisfy Irish negligence, than the one already proposed. And if there be need of the visitor's rising at 5 o'clock, to take the mail for Drogheda or Limerick, let him count only on his own nervous temperament for waking in time-"Boots" is sure to be drowsy. Such unfortunate circumstances are no way counterbalanced by moderation of charges; for though the Irish hostess cannot make a bed, she can make a bill; and whatever limits she puts to the wants of others, she puts still less to her own. These remarks must not be understood to apply to such cities as Dublin or Belfast, nor to many houses which may be found in the neighborhood of Killarney, and through the charming county of Wicklow. The inns of Wales are good and moderate, and you get at them nice dishes of gold-speckled trout, fresh from the mountain brooks; but let one who values his small coin beware of the Welsh miners; or, if charitably disposed, let him fill his pockets with penny pieces, or, if rich enough, with fourpenny bits-a Cræsus, even, could not give a sixpence to all the claimants in the great works of Merthyr Tydvil, without a sensible diminution of his purse's plethora. Beggars are to be met with everywhere; and though they do not, like the Spanish beggar of Gil Blas' experience, present arms-they do, like the Spanish beggar, expect alms to be presented. In England they may be thrust aside; in Scotland they are too proud to beg aloud, and one may feign deafness; in Ireland they must be satisfied-but a penny, even, is a treasure. There is yet another species of people with which one meets in traveling, and who do their part at changing the ducats to silver, who do not come within the category of any class named. These are the guides-not guide-books; and it is important to keep this distinction in view; for in many hotels, if one demands a guide to the town, instead of a book, with here and there an engraving and some historical notices, he will be served with a stout man in rusty leggings, and a clean, straight shirt collar. Such men are very attentive, and, being recommended by the hotel, may be confided in-that is to say, they will not lead you out of the town unwarily, when it is the town you wish to see, nor will they tell you any fanciful stories about the strange objects you may see, because they know of none; nor will they tell you any important personages are buried in the church, who are not buried there, because they know of none who are not buried there; they will not run away with your coat or umbrella, but will quietly walk away at the end of the town with one of your half-crown pieces. A half-crown piece, which it were quite as well to keep in one's own pocket, provided one has not a strange fancy for following the order prescribed by the man in the rusty leggings in viewing the objects of curiosity, rather than his own choice or the determination of accident. The town-guides make up a family of themselves are great lovers of brandy and water-feel it their duty to keep talking, though they have nothing to say-are very careful to express concurrence of opinion with what ever may be observed by the stranger and, in consequence, are quite sure of their money; this they will take as if it was the first fee of the sort they had ever taken in their lives, and as if they had distressing doubts whether they should return it, or drop it in their own pockets. The cathedral guide is more useless still; but, unlike the other, he cannot be avoided he keeps the keys. And he will run over with his senseless roll of names and dates, tombs that cover the ashes of martyrs tombs that sepulchre the hearts of kings, and of heroes greater than kings; reciting in his monotone, without a pause, a galaxy of names, every one of which makes the ear of a man familiar with English history to tingle, and his eye to leap in his head. The cicerone in public institutions is, of course, not to be shaken off; and his services are often very essential. The servitors in the palaces of the nobility are, of all ushers, the most exorbitant in their expectations; nor have you one only to keep in pay, but the porter, the gardener, the housekeeper, and the but ler. The times when one could stroll through the park, and step up by a side door in the great courts and give a quiet rap, and be ushered in by a curtsying house-maid, with a high head-dress, and sit down between her and the old steward at a round table, with a foaming tankard of home-brewed, are all wrapt in cloudy distance that will never brighten. A stout porter with a cockade catches you at the entrance, and you must wait the time of a half-dozen officials, who try to persuade you that they know all the evolutions of court ceremony, while you are panting for a look at veritable Carlo Dolcis. There is yet another guide-the guide to mountain and flood-from the gouty bailiff who shows you the Wilderness of Cowpers' patron, Sir John Throckmorton, to the score of ragged peasants, who scream wild Irish in your ears under the cliffs of the Giant's Causeway. The guides of this class are earnest and indefatigable. They do not scruple to detail to you at length their capacities, and frequently have little convenient pocketbooks, containing the favorable testimony of past employers. They may be found in Wales to show the toys of Snowdon, or any trout brook in the valleys round-at Helvellyn with ponies, to take you up the mountain, and perhaps will tell some odd story about a traveler's perishing there in the snows. They are at the mines of Derbyshire, and in Dovedale, and under Ben Nevis, to carry a whiskey bottle, and show the way through the mists; and at Blair Athol, to show the falls of Bruar, and perhaps hum you a line of Burns' address to Bruar water-they are in the north, upon Culloden Moor-they are in the south, upon Bosworth field-in the west, they will row you around the Bell Rockand in the east, will take you to the rocky isle, where Grace Darling lived and died. Sometimes, such guides are useful, but far oftener useless. They are never satisfied: the more that is given, the more is wanted. Their ideas of the monied value of a given piece of service are extraordinary, varying most unaccountably with the general air and bearing of their employers. Whoever is wise, will put a few plain inquiries to them at the outset ; all delicacy, in deferring them to the last, will be miserably misplaced. With a pannier of cake, and biscuit, and cheese, a pint bottle of "mountain dew," a snug white pony, and a guide, at a cost of some ten or twelve shillings, we remember going up Ben Lomond to see the rich panorama of lake and mountain; and we note in comparison, the ascent unattended, with no ponies but a pike-staff, no guide but a chart, no provisions but a wee bit of a Bologna sausage, and no drink but the melting glacier-mountains of the Alpine range, beside which Ben's Nevis and Lomond were mere molehills. In reckoning the incidental expenses to which one is subject, the guide-book must not be forgotten. Nearly every town in England of any note has its little description livraison, some with pictures and some without, giving dates and facts which help the stranger so much to the appreciation of the scenes that he will hardly be without them in any place of special interest. Of general guidebooks, which cover the whole ground, none stands preeminent. Nothing is better than a map, and a thorough knowledge of English history. These two together, will open sights to a man with eyes, at which he cannot tire of looking, and which he never will forget. And he who is not familiar with the great epochs of English history, and the localities of their evolutions, will spend a few days economically in a garret of London or Liverpool, sweating with Turner or Hume. It had been our intention at beginning, to give in a single paper, an idea of costs in Great Britain and on the Continent. But without leaving the coasts of the English Isle, the subject has filled limits already too great to be extended. Perhaps at some future time, we may have something to say of the garçons of France, or the greasy dinners of Tuscany, or the Romansch Aubergistes of Switzerland. We leave the traveler in England: we cannot leave him where he should keep a better look-out for the thousand new and strange objects, all the while presenting themselves to a stranger; we cannot leave him, where he should keep a better look-out for his ducats. In France or Switzerland, he may be duped out of them, as was Gil Blas at the town of Valladolid; in Spain or in Italy they may be stolen from him, as from Gil Blas at the prison of Burgos; but in England, they will be promptly demanded as of Gil Blas at the inn of Peñaflor. Though in traveling no country demands more money, no country pays the observing traveler better for the money. And to observe well there is need of caution, and for caution, slowness. The man who takes the rail from Liverpool to London, with two days or three in each, three more to Southampton or Brighton, and ships for Havre or Boulogne, knows very little more of Great Britain than Herschell knows of the moon. And the poster, even, who hurries on the two Islands, as if he were seeking a Gretna Green, with Lady Adela Villiers by him, and an Earl of Jersey after him, knows little more. There are places where one must loiter; there are places where one must linger. We have seen those who could go through such a city as Gloucester, and never stop for a look into its glorious cathedral; such a man is not fit to travel. And one within reach of Alnwick Castle-the seat of all the Northumberlands from Hotspurdomabout which, Halleck has thrown the pretty tissue of his poem, and over which age has thrown gray color and ivy; and yet should never visit its old halls, what sort of traveler could such one be? Tastes indeed must vary; and he who explores the coal caverns of Staffordshire, may have no ear for the wild music of the Cave of Staffa. Objects of travel must be different; but one object-that of seeing the most at the least cost-must belong to all. If these hints shall enable any to form an opinion as to how it may be done, they will have answered the ends the writer had in view. |