cheerfully pay for a little extra civility; nor do I think that this practice—­any more than that of feeing our railway porters—­is a public disadvantage.  The waiter does not know till the guest goes whether he is a person of inflexible principles or not, and, therefore, hope ameliorates his manners and shapes his actions to all.  As to getting ‘attendance’ out of the bill, now it has once got into it, that I believe to be impossible.  There it is, like the moth in one’s drawing-room sofa.  And yet I am old enough to remember how poor Albert Smith plumed himself on the benefit he bestowed upon the public, as he had imagined, by introducing a fixed charge for all services and doing away with ‘Please, sir, boots.’  In this country, and, to say truth, in most others, ‘Please, sir, boots,’ is indigenous and not to be done away with.  We did very much better under the voluntary system, although a few people who did not deserve it, but simply could not afford to be lavish, were called in consequence ‘screws.’

To pay the wages of another man’s servants is absurd, and reminds one of the ‘plate, glass, and linen’ that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of ’an old established and family hotel’ near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting the Times upon a guest’s breakfast-table was 6d. up to this present year of grace.  ’Gentlemen and families had always been supplied with it at that price,’ said the landlord, when remonstrated with, ’and it was his principle, and his customers approved it, to keep things as they were.’  It must be admitted, however, that matters have changed for the better in this respect elsewhere; and, at all events, the printed tariff that may now be consulted in every modern hotel enables you to know what you are spending.

Things are improved, too, in the way of light and air; both the public and private rooms of our hotels are far more cheerful and better appointed than they used to be, and instead of the four-posters there are French beds.  The one great advantage that our new system possesses over the old is, indeed, the sleeping accommodation.  The ‘skimpy’ mattress, the sheet that used to come untucked through shortness, leaving the feet tickled by the blanket, and the thin, limp thing that called itself a feather bed, are only to be found in ancient hostelries.

On the other hand, it must be confessed that the food has deteriorated; the bill of fare, indeed, is more pretentious, but the materials are inferior, and so is the cooking.  The well-browned fowl, with its rich gravy and the bread-sauce that used to be its homely but agreeable attendant, has disappeared.  The bird appears now under a French title, and is in other respects unrecognisable; as an Irish gentleman