askant at them, and that the waiters would
turn up their noses at having to wait on
"profeshnal pipple."

Let Jalabert's flourish.  I have no call to
wince at its high charges—my withers are
unwrung: its upper chambers even are not
for those of my degree.  As for its darkness
and narrowness and gloominess, the Nobs
doubtless prefer those elements to democratic
light and height and space.  Bless me!
don't people live in the stable-yard of St.
James's Palace?  Don't the pokey little houses
in the purlieus of Spring Gardens fetch
fabulous rents?  The Nobs like holes and
corners.  They make Her Majesty ride in a
coach above a hundred years old, and in
danger of tumbling to pieces with rottenness.
Abolish that coach, and build her a neat, airy,
springy vehicle in Long Acre at your peril.
The British constitution is at stake.  There
would be a revolution to-morrow.

The second most notable London hotel is the
family, or private hotel in Jermyn Street, St.
James's Street, or Piccadilly.  Smawkington's
hotel is a very nice hotel of these two classes
mixed.  Smawkington's is not exactly in
Jermyn Street, but in Little Great Boot-tree
Street close by.  It is the snuggest, warmest,
quietest, yet cheerfullest little hotel you
can imagine.  When I say little, I mean
compact, tight, cosy.  There is not an inch
of boarding to be seen about the house.
All is carpeted, oil-clothed, matted.  I
wonder they don't carpet the doorstep.  The
house is as clean as a new pin.  The
housemaids and chambermaids are all rosy and
all good-looking.  The housekeeper is a
beauty.  The cook belongs to a glee-club,
and cooks you blithe, wholesome, cheerful,
honest-hearted dinners, that make you eat a
great deal but never gives you an indigestion.
I should like very much indeed to marry the
young lady who sits book-keeping in the
comfortable-bar; not because she is Smawkington's
only daughter, and has a pretty penny to her
fortune—I repudiate such mercenary motives
with disdain—but for the sake of her bright
eyes and her rosy lips and her silver laugh.
I don't think Smawkington would give her to
me, though; inasmuch as he declares her to
be the apple of his eye.  Smawkington is bald,
corpulent, sleek, and black-broadclothed.
His wife is pious, bony, genteel, interested
in missionary enterprises, and contemns the
duties of domesticity.  Mr. S. is not unlike a
duke, or the chairman of a select vestry, or an
undertaker in flourishing circumstances.  He
wears a signet-ring, and keeps a mail-
phaeton; under which there runs a plum-
pudding dog of the Danish breed, quite in
the Hyde Park style.  Of the wines at
Smawkington's—the famous ports, the peculiar
clarets, and the noted sherries—I have
heard that they will make a cat speak; but
I know, for certain, that they will make a
man merry.  Look you here, Mr. Albert
Smith.  When the ruddy curtains are drawn,
and the crystal sparkles on the sideboard,
and the ruby and golden contents of the
decanters gleam on the table; when the fat
little port-wine glasses are filled, and the
filberts are in the vine-leaf dessert plate, and
the almonds and raisins are at hand, and the
candles are lighted and the fire trimmed—
then is the time to confess that all is not
barren that cometh out of England, and that
your nut and your wine, partaken of with all
the accessories of English comfort in an
English family hotel, can compete with, if
they do not surpass, the splendour of the great
French salle-à-manger, or the tinselled
ornateness of the cabinet particulier, with its
long-necked array of sour beverages.  I like
to see my wine.  I would rather have an
aldermanic decanter of handsomely-cut glass,
and the red sea of jollity gleaming within it,
than a lanky flask of green glass, besmeared
with hideously-coloured sealing-wax, and
tilted in a basket like a go-cart.  Faultless
family-dinners take place at Smawkington's.
You may smell the good things as you
pass; there is no ostentation—no show—no
noisy gongs clanging: but all is substantial,
respectable, comfortable, cosy, English.

The most constant guests at Smawkington's
appear to me to be bishops and rich old
ladies.  Other members of the dignified
clergy, and other old ladies occasionally
frequent it; but the real, complete bishop—
gaiters, apron, shovel-hat, and all, seems the
pontifex maximus of Smawkington's.  You
may see his cob at the hotel-door every
morning, in waiting for his grave ride about
Whitehall and Downing Street.  The rich old
lady, too, arrives from Devon or Somerset in a
travelling-carriage.  She has ladies'-maids,
companions, lap-dogs, confidential male
servants and orphan protégés.  Frequently she
has a bevy of long-ringleted, sea-green-skirted
daughters; sometimes a niece.  She has rackety
rapid young country squires or desperate
guardsmen also appertaining unto her as
nephews.  But, for them, Smawkington's
is a vast deal too slow.  They hang
out, as they call it, at vivacious hostelries
in the noisy part of Piccadilly, or in
Covent Garden Piazza or Charing Cross.
They drive up to Smawkington's in tearing
cabs, or ride up on rampagious horses.
They have grave grooms and impudent little
tigers.  They come to see the old lady; they
flirt with the sea-green-skirted daughters,
and scandalise the reputable waiter by
demanding brandy and soda-water at
unreasonable hours in the morning.

Smawkington's cannot—candour obliges
me to acknowledge it—be called a cheap
hotel.  It is dear, but not extortionate.  Nor
is it unapproachable to the democracy, like
Jalabert's.  The modest democrat can stop
there, and need not ruin himself; and I can
honestly state, that I can find in London many
other hotels as comfortable and well-
conducted.