From the moment the Englishman enters a Continental railway carriage, and especially if he is proceeding into Germany, two things strike him: First, the extreme luxury, roominess, and comfort of the carriages; and, second, the universal propensity to the use of tobacco. The second-class carriages are generally fully equal in their fitting and provisions for ease to our British first-class, while the German first-class carriages surprise us by the numerous little thoughtful appliances they exhibit to the wants and fancies of their temporary occupants. This seems rather a contradiction to an Englishman, who flatters himself that the word _comfort_ is indigenous to his own country, and who actually sees, go where he will, that in its domestic arrangements an English house and houshold is the most comfortable in the world. This discordance between the practice of home and foreign countries, is probably to be traced to the difference of general habits and tendencies. To an Englishman, home is the place which is dearer than any other. In it he spends his time chiefly. He makes his home, therefore, and likes to see it made, the most comfortable place of all. To him a public conveyance or a public place of resort is no permanent temptation. He comes back always the happier, and he counts generally how soon he may get back again to his home. But on the Continent it is generally different. Home has few comforts or attractions, chiefly because habit has led to the custom of dining, of supping, of sipping coffee and punch, of drinking wine, and of smoking, in public. The public places of resort are made comfortable and luxurious to invite these visits. People look for and provide more comfort abroad than at home; and thus into their railway carriages, which, like other public places, are really smoking-shops, they carry the luxurious appliances which they deny themselves at home.