brushing the ceiling.  Why it so happens
that, in the conventional hotel, the smaller
is the room the larger is the four-poster,
it is impossible to explain.  Within the
heavy, expensive, elaborate mass of serge,
chintz, feathers, mahogany, horsehair, sacking,
holland, ticking, quilting, winch-screws,
brass rings, and castors and watchpockets,
the hapless traveller rolls about in vastness,
and swelters, and gasps, and breathes the
same uncirculating air over and over again,
and before he ventures into it, it is even at
times asked "if he will have a pan of coals?"
Without the bed, his toilet operations are
necessarily confined to cabin-like space. There
is no table to put anything on, nor is there
any room for one.  Sitting in such a cribbed
chamber is out of the question, and so he has
no choice between the coffee-room, and the
gaunt, stark, expensive private apartment,
where the old waiter makes him an assenting
party to all the old tomfoolery of burning
two old wax candles, in two old plated heavy
candelabra rather than candlesticks, after
which it is possible the old chambermaid
sends him to his old bed with an old mutton
dip without snuffers.

In the country town hotel, the coffee-room
was a ghastly place.  There was no gas; but
some mould candles were burning about with
cocked hat wicks, and their light was all
absorbed by the dingy paper.  The only
pictures were of the old coaching school, with
that dull, half-animal clod, the Jehu (as
writers of the Pierce Egan school used to
call him), tooling the prads along a road at a
rate they never achieved.  There was a dusty
old stuffed pheasant in a glass case over the
door; a looking-glass over the mantel-piece,
divided into sections, that put each side of
your head on a different level if you got
between them, making your face look as if it
were going up-stairs; a number of dark old
tables, indented with knocks of presidents'
hammers and freemasons' glasses; and a
couple of long, old-fashioned bell-pulls of
scarlet stuff edged with black, which came
down bodily when you pulled them.  On a
thin, bygone sideboard were some old,
battered, plated cruet-stands and egg-cups—
always with the copper coming through; and
an ancient toastrack of the same fabric—one
of those you can only see at sales.  A nipped
old lady presided in the bar; the waiters had
the air of old curates who had tried to better
themselves by taking to the hotel business;
the boots was permanently bent with carrying
portmanteaus up and down stairs, and the
chambermaid had attended on Queen Charlotte
when she changed horses there.  They
had all lived at this inn without changing one
of its arrangements, until they had allowed
the world to ride past in an express train,
and finally away from them.

We are comforted, after all, with an
ominous rumour that, even just at present, a
large hotel is contemplated in London.  If
well conducted it must (so we are told) return
a fortune to the shareholders.  The attention
of readers and of the public is directed to a
summing up of one or two changes which
the travelling world will appreciate.  First
and again, a fixed and moderate charge for
attendants.  Secondly, Bedrooms on the
continental plan, in which the inmates can
sit if they please without being driven to
the melancholy extortion of the grim
"private room."  Thirdly, Something beyond
"chop, sir, steak, boiled fowl," for dinner.
Fourthly, The entire abolition of wax candles,
coffee equipage, and the whole service of
battered regular-old-established-English-hotel
plated dishes with the copper showing
through.  Fifthly, Civil, quick, appreciative
waiters; not anomalous people between mutes
and box-keepers.  Sixthly, An office for
general information or complaint, with responsible
persons always therein.  Seventhly, and
lastly, The recognition of the presence of ladies
in the coffee-room, as in the foreign
salle-à-manger.

Many, indeed all, of these suggestions are
pregnant with good sense; and I am sure
that their adoption would lead to increased
comfort, convenience, and cheapness in our
English hotels.  But I do not go the complete
and whole animal in denouncing them.  We
have much to reform, much to improve, much
to remodel; but entire destruction of our
hotel edifice I would respectfully deprecate.
I am of opinion that, in a vast number of
instances, we might go much further abroad
and fare immeasurably worse.  Bad attendance,
incivility, discomfort, useless parade, and
extortion, have their home elsewhere than in
England.  I have been in as many foreign
hotels as most men, and—wo is me—I
know it.  The best plan to adopt, and one that
would produce a new and bright era in the
management of hotels, would be to take the
best part of each system—French, German,
Swiss, and American—and graft them on to
our own.  To hotels conducted by companies
I do, and must always dissent.  I do not in
the least object to joint-stock companies
building, furnishing, and founding large
hotels: for, if properly and comprehensively
commenced, hotels are gigantic enterprises,
and it is only by association of capital that
they can be established.  But their after-
management must be confided to some
entreprenneur, whose fortune, credit, knowledge,
and reputation are at stake in the management
thereof; and not to a hired servant,
whose salary is punctually paid whether the
hotel be well or ill-conducted.  The Pavilion
Hotel at Folkestone was begun by a
company; the Great Western Hotel belongs to
a company; the Granton Hotel near
Edinburgh was built by a company; but they are
all underlet; and, if we except scarcely-avoidable
and exceptional short-comings, better
conducted hostelries do not exist in Great
Britain.  I am no tory, Heaven knows, but