As I idly flutter the yellow leaves of the advertisements of inns in ‘Bradshaw,’ they call up pictures in my mind quite undreamt of by the proprietors.  I have been a sojourner in almost all of these which are described as ‘situated in picturesque localities.’  They are all—­it is in print and must be true—­’first-class’ hotels; they have most of them ‘unrivalled accommodation;’ not a few of them have been ’patronised by Royalty,’ and one of them even by ‘the Rothschilds.’  These last, of course, are great caravanserais, with ‘magnificent ladies’ drawing-rooms’ and ‘replete’ (a word that seems to have taken service with the licensed victuallers) ‘with every luxury.’  They make up (a term unfortunately suggestive of transformation) hundreds of beds; they have equipages and ‘night chamberlains;’ ‘On y parle francais;’ ’Man spricht Deutsch.’  Of some of these there is quite a little biography, beginning with the year of their establishment and narrating their happy union with other agreeable premises, like a brick and mortar novel.  I remember them well:  their ‘romantic surroundings’ or ’their exclusive privilege of meeting trains upon the platform;’ their accurate resemblance to ‘a gentleman’s own house’ (with ’a reception-room 80 feet by 90 feet’); their ‘douche and spray baths;’ their ‘unexceptionable tariff;’ and even their having undergone those ‘extensive alterations,’ through which I also underwent something, which they did not allow for in the bill.

These hotels are all more or less satisfactory as to appearance; furnished, not, indeed, with such taste, nor so lavishly, as their rivals on the Continent, but handsomely enough; they are much cleaner than foreign inns; and if their reference to ’every sanitary improvement which science can suggest’ is a little tall, even for an advertisement, one never has cause to shudder as happens in some places in France proper and in Brittany everywhere.  Though it must be admitted that tables d’hote abroad are not the banquets which the travelling Briton believes them to be, our own hotel public dinners are inferior to their originals, and, what is very hard, those who pay for an entertainment in private suffer from them.  The guest who happens to dine later than the table d’hote in his own apartment can hardly escape getting things ‘warmed up;’ and if he dines at the same time he has nobody to wait on him.  There is one thing that presses with great severity on paterfamilias—­the charge which is made at many of the large hotels of 1s. 6d. a day for attendance on each person.  Half a guinea a week for service is a high price even for a bachelor; but when this has to be paid for every member of the family, it is ruinous.  Young ladies who dine at the same table and do not give half the trouble of ‘single gentlemen’ ought not to be taxed in this way.  It is urged by many that since attendance is charged in the bill,’ there should be no other fees.  But the lover of comfort will always