TRAVELING IN STYLE : SMALL...

Travel has forever enriched the world’s great literature, from Marco Polo’s adventures and Chaucer’s lusty pilgrims to Gulliver’s Lilliput voyage and the inane peccadilloes of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. As often as not, an overnight stay figures into the tale at some point, be it Somerset Maugham’s dispiriting hostelry in “Rain,” the guest book of poor unfortunates in Robert Sherwood’s play,”Idiots Delight,” or Tennessee Williams’ “Night of the Iguana.”

“Seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion,” wrote William Ellery Channing, an astute 19th-Century clergyman-editor. Today, where hotels are concerned, nobody could say it better.

Any way you look at it, hotels and inns can be colorful, dramatic settings. That, as any traveler knows, is not the major function of a hotel, but a little color, romance or history never hurts. Yet, finding a hotel of individuality, character, civilized comforts and a generous measure of ineffable charm isn’t the world’s easiest chore.

The following select group of eight European hotels has most of the above virtues and a number of others. First, each reflects its country’s traditions, be it in decor, dining or spirit. The food, wines and service are uniformly superior. Surroundings range from beautiful to idyllic. And not least, each is rather small, a particular advantage that usually translates into more personal attention to a guest’s needs and preferences.

Tim Hart read economics at Cambridge, had a go at the heady financial world of The City (London’s Wall Street), and married a vivacious Balkan named Stefa. Somewhere along the way they decided to become innkeepers and purchased Hambleton Hall, a 19th-Century manor house in the oft-maligned English Midlands. Actually it’s rolling, green hunt country, as tranquil, beautiful and bucolic as any stretch of greenery we know in Britain. The house itself stands on a gentle slope down to Rutland Water.

Nina Campbell, a well-known English interior designer, worked her considerable magic on the interior. Each bedroom is an individual expression of modulated elegance in soft colors and exquisite furnishings. The English country house reaches its zenith in the lounges; all are handsomely furnished, with copies of Country Life, Financial Times and Punch arranged on sideboards, and windows picturing cheerful gardens and the lake below.

Dinner at Hambleton Hall is an epicurean adventure too seldom encountered outside of London’s finest restaurants. A recent menu offered a first course of marinated Scottish salmon with cucumber in a yogurt and dill sauce, and pastry leaves filled with creamed duck eggs, the last topped with salmon. Entrees feature whole Dover sole grilled on the bone with fresh limes, or filets of new-season lamb with an apricot-mint sauce. You finish with English and French farmhouse cheeses and a symphony of beyond-sinful desserts. The wine selection concentrates on bottles that are “delicious to drink, avoiding fashionable labels with indifferent contents.”

(Hambleton Hall, Oakham, Rutland LE15 8TH, telephone Oakham 0572- 56991. Rates for two in a double room with continental breakfasts (full English optional), service and VAT, $160.)

Take an 18th-Century palace, limit the guest rooms to a manageable 18, place it in one of the country’s most scenic hill towns and you have a priceless gem of a hotel sparkling in the Portuguese sunlight. Hotel Palacio de Seteais was built by a Dutch consul general of the time, rich from the diamond trade. It later passed into the hands of a Portuguese marquis. Both gentlemen were obviously unwilling to settle for anything but the most elegant of Renaissance architecture and furnishings. Sete ais means “seven sighs” in Portuguese, and the hotel usually draws considerably more from ecstatic guests.

Bedrooms with furnishings in fanciful toile de jouy , rich and lustrous draperies shimmering like cloth of gold, would please a Medici family. Lounges are a masterful arrangement of exquisite period furniture, encircled by hand-painted murals of garden scenes that extend into the ceiling, creating a light and airy outdoors feeling.

The dining room draws locals and Lisboans for its classic treatment of Portuguese dishes: braised whiting with vinho verde , veal in Madeira, and usually some tempting version of Portugal’s always-enjoyable cod. Lord Byron is said to have worked on “Childe Harold” in the palace gardens, pronouncing the village of Sintra, “in every respect the most delightful in Europe.”

(Palacio de Seteais, 2710 Sintra, Portugal. Telephone 9233200. Rates $154 for two with breakfasts, tax and service compris.)

From Portuguese palatial splendor we journey to a 13th-Century Provencal homestead built into the medieval ramparts of Haut-de-Cagnes, one of the most enchanting hill villages of the Haut Pays rising behind the Cote d’Azur. Hotel Le Cagnard was once a chateau of the Grimaldis. The vaulted dining room was the guards quarters and is now famed all along the Cote d’Azur (as well as in Paris) for its table.

It is one of the most romantic hotels we have ever visited: gigantic, informal arrangements of flowers in earthenware pottery everywhere; burnished antiques in bedrooms and lounges; breathtaking scenery from most windows. Each room is furnished differently, some with a satisfying mix of old Provence and hill-town rustic, others have the appeal of a small patio.

You can take your meals in the old guardroom or on a tiled terrace with hand-carved beams above and spectacular views of the lush countryside, roses from the garden on every table. I had what is surely the best-in-memory warm foie gras on a bed of local greens. My dining companion was moved to raves over the feuillete de escargots , (snails in leaf pastry) . Main courses are done with equal finesse.

(Hotel Le Cagnard, Haut-de-Cagnes, 06800 Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, telephone 932073221 or 22. Double rooms $62-$71, studios $84-92, suites up to $160, all plus taxes.)

If you’re looking for worldly sophistication, Belgium’s glorious Ardennes Forest isn’t for you. Ducks waddle through muddy barnyards, there’s the distinctive, not unpleasant smell of new-mown hay. Many once-regal castles are in ruins, and industry leans toward weaving and hand-wrought ironwork. But if the warm russets, greens and golds of virgin forest, silver and jade of mountain streams, the clack of a loom or chink of a stonemason’s chisel are the sights and sounds you could learn to love, start your lessons in the Ardennes.

Our headquarters here has for years been Le Vieux Chateau, a small delight of a hotel in the fetching village of La Roche en Ardenne. Michele and Andre Linchet have owned and run Vieux Chateau for a quarter century, he the cuisinier of a Michelin-star kitchen, she a lively and gracious majordomo of the desk and of guests’ needs. Only nine rooms available here, small and utilitarian as in most country hotels of Belgium and France. But there’s a 9th-Century castle hovering over the garden terrace out back.

Andre Linchet has just been selected as one of a dozen Master Chefs in Belgium, a distinction apparent at every meal. His medaillons de marcassin aux champignons sauvages , young wild boar with wild mushrooms, left a culinary imprint we can’t forget. As did the filet de chevreuil with truffles sauce. Vieux Chateau is the bargain in this selection, particularly if you take full or half pension.

(Le Vieux Chateau, Pesse Rue 6, 6980 La Roche en Ardenne, Belgium, telephone 084-411327. $63 for two persons, double, tax and service compris .)

Klosters’ Hotel Walserhof is a Swiss chalet that shouts its country-style from doorway to gabled rooftop. Radiant red geraniums spill in waves from planters on wooden balconies that seem to encircle each floor; the entry door is a masterful work of beautifully carved wood, rustic ironwork and leaded glass.

Within, Walserhof is one of the most elegant farmhouses on earth, built with 13th- and 14th-Century beams that still bear the brand of their original owners, graced with traditional furniture, antiques and fabrics of unusual richness and color. Bedrooms are a soothing combination of knotty-wood paneling, enormous beds with down comforters, and sprightly colors as joyful accents. Sauna, solarium and garage available for guests; all rooms have balconies and mountain views.

Beat and Gabi Bollinger, another chef-hostess-owners team, have created a dining room that would do credit to Paris or Lyon in food and ambiance. A menu the size of the Rosetta stone offers such as carpaccio de veau aux truffes , a creamed soup of nuts from the local valley, supreme of duck breast glazed with Klosters honey, plus daily prix fixe . A heroic wine list offers 172 entries of Europe’s finest, from locals to a grand cru Chateau Lafite Rothschild ’71 at $256.

(Hotel Walserhof, 7250 Klosters, Switzerland, telephone 083-44242. Double room with buffet breakfasts $93-$123 summers, $139-$193 high winter season, service and taxes included.)

Knowledgeable travelers have always looked forward to an overnight or longer in one of Denmark’s cozy roadside kros , (Danish for inn), most of them located in the countryside. Many insist that Falsled Kro on the island of Funen is the country’s best. It was a 15th-Century gathering place of smugglers, whose work was made easier by the number of hidden landing coves nearby.

Three centuries later the inn moved up in class when it was granted royal license to make its own beer and aquavit, a lure to sailors waiting for ships in the active little Falsled port that can be reached by walking through the inn’s garden. Everything about the kro speaks of another time, from thatched roof and cobbled courtyard to rustic fireplaces in the lounges and in seven of its 14 living-bedroom combinations. The temptation here is to snuggle into a deep and inviting chair before a fireplace, open a good book and stay for days.

Falsled’s dining room has a vaguely Elizabethan aura, with beams embedded in its white walls, meat and fowl turning on spits before an open fire. Everything from the kitchen is fresh and homemade, from vegetables grown in the kro’s garden to home-baked bread and pastries, meat and fish from its own smokehouse. Specialties are seafood and wild game plus domestic quail, bred there and turned into dishes for the gods. Come anytime except December through April, when it’s closed.

(Falsled Kro, DK 5642 Millinge, Denmark, telephone 09-681111. Rates for two persons in double rooms and living-bedroom combinations run from $91 to $220.)

That at first glance looks like an old English coaching stop of the 17th Century is four town houses of the same period joined to become one of Oxfordshire’s finest country hotels, The Feathers, in the delightful village of Woodstock a few miles from Oxford. Owner Gordon Campbell-Gray called in Lady Charles Spencer-Churchill, she of the sure decorative hand and posh following, who outdid herself in creating a warm and relaxing atmosphere that still breathes style and character.

After clumping around the grounds of Blenheim Palace just down the street, have your twilight sherry or something stronger before the fireplace in a lounge crammed with exquisite china, or in another that’s lined with shelves of books that span the centuries, or perhaps out back in the small and flower-filled courtyard garden. That’s about the time Campbell-Gray comes in from a daily romp with his twin Labs, every ounce the country gentleman and hearty host.

Then dress for a candlelight dinner chosen from a menu that is more British than the House of Lords: salad of smoked goose breast or terrine of grouse, followed by fillets of delicate lemon sole filled with salmon mousse and a white wine sauce, or perhaps a breast of guinea fowl in a mango-and-coriander glaze. Finish with luscious Stilton with nuts and a good claret or port from Gordon’s carefully chosen list.

(The Feathers, Market Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX7 1SX, telephone 0993-812291; $133-$172 for two persons, full English breakfasts and VAT inclusive.)

When the late Aga Khan headed a consortium to develop Sardinia’s northeast coast into the Costa Smeralda, they vowed to make the architecture, building materials and landscaping of four hotels, a tennis club and golf course complement, never sully, the gorgeous emerald shores. Hotel Pitrizza achieves it best and is also the most intimate, exclusive and at home with its surroundings.

The main building and outlying villas of artful simplicity are nearly invisible, thanks to roofs covered with honey-colored soil and the dusty green Mediterranean maquis of the island, rough-cut stone used liberally to further soften and disguise. Even the saltwater pool is carved from stone, and the little private beach seems untouched by anything but nature.

Pitrizza’s dining room serves superb Continental-Italian, the latter best expressed in a huge antipasti table that is a pure work of art. Our Dover sole, flown in that morning, was grilled to perfection. With luck, you’ll also find Sardinian specialties: sa buridda , a hearty fish soup; wild boar or suckling pig roasted over a bed of olive wood and myrtle leaves.

(Hotel Pitrizza, 07020 Porto Cervo, Costa Smeralda, Sardegna, telephone 0789-91500; $560 for two persons, half-pension low season, $790 high, plus VAT.)