ground offices in which the main business of the hotel is carried on.

There is a very popular print which represents a longitudinal section of a first-rate man-of-war, and which at one glance shows the spectator the whole economy and anatomy of a great war-ship of the old school. If we could make a transverse section of the Grosvenor, it would be equally interesting, and, moreover, it would represent a thing of the advanced present, instead of, as in the case of the 120-gun ship, only a picture of the past.

No object in the metropolis strikes the provincial Englishman with more astonishment than the first sight of this huge building. From the dip of Piccadilly he sees it looming in the distance, far over the head of the royal palace; as he gets nearer it seems to grow into the air; and as he debouches full upon it from some side-street, it towers up like a mountain before him-a mountain chiselled from basement to garret with clustered fruit and flowers, all wrought in enduring stone.

A fastidious taste may perhaps think the building somewhat overdressed, but there can be no dispute about the enormous amount of labour spent in its enrichment, or respecting the imposing appearance of the pile, with its "stories without end" which the giddy head refuses to count. The richness of its exterior far surpasses the Louvre Hotel, from which it totally differs as regards construction.

From the open nature of its site it is lit almost wholly from without, whilst the model Parisian hotel,

jammed in between tall houses, was constrained to adopt the interior-court system, which, together with some advantages, on the whole contrasts unfavourably with the design of our great metropolitan hotel.

The disadvantages are patent the first moment we enter the doors of the Grosvenor. Although we enter a noble hall, from which marble flights of stairs ascend with almost regal dignity and amplitude, yet we must confess that we miss the exquisite grace which greets the stranger as he drives into the crystal courtyard of the Louvre. We miss the tropical verdure and the trophies of flowers which adorn the grand court, the Oriental palms on the balustraded stairs through which fair faces gleam and bright eyes glisten from the open windows of the gilded saloon as the bell announces the arrival of strangers. By night, again, we miss the bright café, the brilliantly illuminated offices, and the fringe of guests smoking and clareting, and clattering petits verres, whilst ladies take ices and demurely quiz ; we miss, also, the salle-à-manger, which rivals the finest rooms of the Louvre palace in gilding, in rich mouldings, and in its painted ceilings. But in all the true substantialities of an hotel, in the comfort of its arrangements, in the light of its apartments, and in its cooking, and last, but not least, in its moderate charges, the Grosvenor may challenge comparison with its Parisian rival.

When we speak of rivalling, however, we only refer to management and arrangements, as no London hotel yet constructed can bear comparison either with the Hôtel Grand or Louvre in magnitude. For instance,

the Grosvenor makes up only 180 beds, whilst the Louvre can accommodate 500 guests, and its sister hotel an equal number, we believe. Whilst, however, Paris can sustain only two of these gigantic caravanserais, London will, in a short time, possess at least a dozen of the more moderate-sized railway hotels, of which we take the Grosvenor as a type.

But let us enter, as we have tarried long enough on the threshold. If you wish, good traveller, to spend but moderately, and you are therefore told that you must mount to the third flight, your mind and your legs also will be relieved at being invited to enter the ascending-room.

At the Louvre you sigh as you see your heavy luggage taken up by the "lift," and wonder why humanity should be treated worse than trunks and portmanteaus. But "they manage these things better" at the Grosvenor at least as far as the traveller is concerned, for he steps into a room, throws himself on a lounging sofa, and, lo! he is in a trice on the third floor. Meanwhile, the porter is constrained to carry his own load and that of the traveller up the long and wearisome flights of stairs, an error this, but one which the traveller will at least contrast favourably with the arrangements of his Parisian hosts.

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When we consider the waste of human muscles that a few gallons of water scientifically applied can save, we wonder that these convenient ascendingrooms were not in public use long ago. One hundred and twenty gallons of water is sufficient to work the

hydraulic apparatus by which the room, with its complement of seven inmates, can be lifted, say 120 feet, which, at fivepence a thousand gallons, makes the cost a little more than a halfpenny.

But here we are on the third floor, and as the room stops level with the landing, the head chambermaid, who has been spoken with through the gutta-percha tube from the bar below or "bureau de reception," as our Parisian friends have it-meets us and conducts us to the apartment assigned to us. As in the Parisian hotels, there is a service to which is attached a head chambermaid and two subordinates, neatly dressed in black stuff with white aprons.

The "service" here is not the gossiping, lounging room of the Louvre, in which the male attendant receives the keys, and dispenses bad cigars to the little company on his particular étage. We know the obvious limits of service which Nature draws between men and women. Men do not make the beds, and women do not act as porters. The room of the head chambermaid is used simply as a station to receive orders and to take the keys of the guests.

One is astonished abroad to find the keys of every guest hanging in the hall of the hotel on a black board opposite the number of his bedroom; and one is more astonished to find that the clumsy, ill-wrought keys are all alike, and that it is the easiest thing possible either to take your neighbour's key when he is out— and you may be certain he is out by the fact of his key being on the peg,—or else to use your own key to enter any apartment whose lock it will fit.

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When the Grosvenor was opened the foreign system was adopted, in so far as hanging the keys openly in the "service," and the result was that different rooms were entered and robbed, by the facilities thus given, to the extent of £500. If this had gone on it would have ruined the hotel. Mr. Hobbs was therefore called in, the doors were altered so as to open from the inside only by the handle, and from the outside by the patent key; consequently, if a guest should leave his key on the mantelpiece, and slam the door behind him, the master-key of the manager would be his only means of obtaining ingress. If he took his key he would leave it at the service, not open, as abroad, but in a frame specially fitted up to receive it, and fastened with a patent lock, the key of which is retained in the possession of the head chambermaid. By this arrangement surreptitious entry into any guest's room is impossible, and since its adoption robberies have altogether ceased.

It is unnecessary to describe the bedrooms, all of which are lofty. We may go so far as to say they differ as widely from the old bedroom of the British hotel as these did from the sleeping-room of a wellordered private house of the best class. In addition to the usual conveniences, 120 of the sleeping-rooms have private closets. Those only who have experienced the indescribable odour of those apartments in the immediate vicinity of the said closets, in the very best hotels in Paris, will be able to appreciate the merit of this arrangement.

There are private suites of rooms on the different