he remarks sententiously, 'Men have more privilege than 'mountains in meeting.' From Dunfermline he visits Sir George Bruce's 'cole-mines,' recently discovered at the Cooras, and vividly describes his delight and amazement. It had one entrance by land and another by the sea at low tide, so well fenced that the sea could not break in. The bed of coal was found forty feet below sea-level, and 'following the veine of the mine they did digge forward still: so that in the space of eight and twentie, or nine and twentie yeares, they have digged 'more then an English mile under the sea.' His enthusiasm rises to verse, in which he calls it 'A darke, light, pleasant, profitable hell.'

Through 'Glaneske' he rides up the mountains by a bridle path, not above a yard broad in places, so fearfull ' & horrid it was to looke down into the bottome for if ' either horse or man had slipt he had fallen (without recovery) a good mile downright.' In an 'Irish' hovel where he lodged the night he made acquaintance with what he calls 'Irish musketoes, a Creature that hath six 'legs and lives like a monster altogether upon man's 'flesh. But they were the first and last he encountered on all his travels, which shows that English inns were clean even if rough.

He describes the Highlanders as 'Red shankes,' speaking nothing but Irish, and their attire struck him as very strange and barbarous, although he himself on one occasion went hunting with 'my Lord of Marre' 'in that 'shape.' The height of the mountains impressed him greatly; compared to them, he says, Shooter's Hill, Gad's Hill, Highgate, Hampstead, Birdlip or the Malverns are but mole-hills, or as the gizzard upon a capon's wing. He does not forget to comment upon a Scotch mist, ' which wets an Englishman to the skin.' He returned from his pilgrimage by a slightly different route to London, where the day after his arrival he was entertained ' with much good Cheere, and after Supper we had a

'Play of the Life and Death of Guy of Warwicke, plaied 'by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie his men. 'And so on the Thursday morning being the fifteenth of ' October, I came home to my house in London.'

Shall we leave the joys of the road and say nothing of the wayside inn? numbered now alas amongst the vanished joys of life. As a recent writer has said: 'Unless we are greatly deceived by the old writers, an 'English inn used to be a delightful resort, abounding in 'comfort, and supplied with the best of food; a place, too, where one was sure of a welcome at once hearty ' and courteous. The inns of to-day, in country towns ' and villages, are not in that good old sense inns at all; they are merely public-houses.' In Professor Elze's Life of Shakespeare we read that in his day 'inns had 'become a well organised institution'; indeed, it is probable that they were so from a much earlier period, at any rate on the well travelled pilgrimage routes. Harrison in describing them says: 'each comer is sure to 'lie in clean sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged 'since they came from the laundress, or out of the water ' wherein they were last washed. If the traveller have a horse, his bed doth cost him nothing, but if he go on 'foot he is sure to pay a penny for the same. But ' whether he be horseman or footman, if his chamber 'be once appointed, he may carry the key with him, as ' of his own house so long as he lodgeth there. If he 'lose aught while he abideth in the inn, the host is bound 'by a general custom to restore the damage, so that there 'is no greater security for travellers than in the greatest 'inns of England.' It was also a pleasant life there, according to Elze, for there was music in the morning and at dinner, and the host and hostess vied with each other in entertaining the guests at meal times, though they did not eat with them.

We may easily picture the comfort of the arrival, either for the footsore pedestrian who had tramped since

daybreak, or the horseman who had battled through wind and rain, or ridden smartly to escape nightfall on the open heath. With what delight would he hail the ruddy glow that greeted him from afar, and the warmth of hospitable greeting while the ostler ran out to take round his horse, and the hostess came beaming to the door to know what he would have. And then he might sit by a roaring fire in good company, and relate the perils of the way. Mayhap he felt the crowning pleasure of the day's journey was the journey's end.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT PEOPLE READ

NOT the least among the joys of a quiet country life was the possession of a well stocked library. 'I pity unlearned ' gentlemen upon a rainy day,' was Lord Falkland's characteristic remark; and his library at Great Tew was one of the many attractions of that charming abode, where scholars loved to foregather. Abraham Cowley, to that modest wish of his for a small house and large garden in the country, added a desire for

-a few friends and many books, both true Both wise and both delightful too!

The typical country squire of a later day, whose ideas. were bounded by his stable and his kennels, if not absolutely non-existent, was far less common than he became after the Revolution and during the Hanoverian regime. In Stuart days libraries were matters of pride and some ostentation, and considerable sums of money were spent on books by the fashionable and well-to-do.

The opening of this century saw the institution of the Bodleian Library. There had been a public library in Oxford earlier, founded by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and enriched by many subsequent donors, but this the greed and fanaticism of the Reformers of Edward VI.'s time had utterly destroyed. Anthony Wood says that 'some of the books so taken out by the Reformers were 'burnt, some sold for Robin Hood's pennyworths, either

'to Booksellers, or to Glovers to press their gloves, or 'Taylors to make measures, or Bookbinders to cover 'books bound by them, and some also kept by the 'Reformers for their own use.' This he learned from old inhabitants who were living at the time of the pillage. By the end of the sixteenth century the literary spirit was fully awake again, and Sir Thomas Bodley was moved to restore the old library, of which the room still remained, and to make it fit and handsome with seates and shelfes and desks and all that may be needfull 'to stir up other benevolence to help furnish it with 'bookes.' In 1602 the Library was opened, already containing more than two thousand volumes, and two years later Royal Letters Patent were granted.

James I., who was a very bookish if not a very learned man, took great interest in the scheme, and when on a visit to Oxford he saw the statue of the founder, remarked, 'He should have been called Sir Thomas Godley.' Soon after an advantageous agreement was entered into with Stationers' Hall that one perfect copy of every new book published should be presented to the Bodleian. Other men's benevolence was soon stirred up, and valuable gifts flowed in. The learned Alleyne bequeathed his precious store of ancient MSS. and books to his favourite pupil Sir Kenelm Digby in these words: 'I give to Sir Kenelm Digbie Knight, my noble friend, all my manuscripts and 'what other of my books he shall or may take a liking 'unto.' This bequest Sir Kenelm, at the instigation of his earlier tutor Archbishop Laud, made over to the new library. The MSS. were to the number of two hundred and thirtyeight, uniformly bound and stamped with the Digby arms.

Raleigh, Cotton, Bacon, Butler, all appear among the donors of this period, as well as Selden a little later, who bequeathed a very valuable collection of oriental and Greek MSS. and Rabbinical and Talmudic literature; Cromwell too gave some Greek MSS. The Puritans do not seem to have inherited the iconoclastic zeal of their