Lichfield and Uttoxeter

After my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by an indirect route to
Lichfield, and put up at the Black Swan. Had I known where to find it, I
would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the
worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black
Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an
arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance door to the
different parts of the house, and through which, and over the large
stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into
an enclosed courtyard, with a thunderous uproar among the contiguous
rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only guest of the spacious
establishment, but may have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their
separate parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of interests which
is the characteristic feature of life in an American hotel. At any rate,
I had the great, dull, dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old
mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a soul to exchange a
word with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had
evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former
practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested
self-dependence for occupation of mind and amusement, can quite avail, as
I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room
under such circumstances as these, with no book at hand save the
county-directory, nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days
ago. So I buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers
(there is no other kind of bed in these old inns), let my head sink into
an unsubstantial pillow, and slept a stifled sleep, infested with such a
fragmentary confusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley,
compounded of the night-troubles of all my predecessors in that same
unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the musty odor of a bygone century
was in my nostrils,--a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any
conception before crossing the Atlantic.

In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chiccory in the dusky
coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the
crooked streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly
attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its name
in the old Saxon tongue has a dismal import that would apply well, in
these days and forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in our
native land. Lichfield signifies "The Field of the Dead Bodies,"--an
epithet, however, which the town did not assume in remembrance of a
battle, but which probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig
of rue or other