The other inn, which we have sketched at Wingham, Kent, is a very remarkable building, portions of which certainly date from the fourteenth century. The great roof, which is visible from the upper rooms, is very interesting, and seems at one time to have formed a kind of hall undivided from end to end (the porch with its bow windows above it is a charming feature). Possibly it may have been a primitive concert room, and resounded with those sweet old English madrigals of Bird, Dowland, and Orlando Gibbons.
There is a fine old Gothic inn at Glastonbury with a front of entirely cut stone, and the picturesque old “King’s Head” at Chigwell, the original of Dickens’s “Maypole” in Barnaby Rudge, is a good example of the Stuart period.
The bishops and clergy of various denominations who have started “The People’s Refreshment House Association, Limited,” have no doubt the idea of replacing the ordinary village “public-house” by something more nearly resembling the old “hostelrie,” in fact, of replacing the mere drinking-shop by an establishment where rational refreshment can be obtained by those who require it, and should they succeed in their enterprise they will earn the thanks of all thinking people and be doing a good work in the cause of temperance.
H. W. Brewer.
(To be continued.)
CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.
By MARGARET INNES.
CHAPTER IX.
MORE ABOUT THE CHINAMEN.