The writer then proceeds to illustrate the sumptuous character of our new Club-houses by reference to the Reform. "Unlike in most English buildings, the staircase is wide and commodious, and calls to mind that of the Louvre. The quadrangular apartment which terminates it, is surrounded by spacious galleries; the rich mosaic pavement, in which the brilliancy of the colour is only surpassed by the variety of the design--the cut-glass ceiling, supported by four rows of marble pillars--all these things call to remembrance the most magnificent apartments of Versailles in the days of the great king and his splendours. This is the vestibule, which is the grand feature of the mansion." The kitchen is then described--"spacious as a ball-room, kept in the finest order, and white as a young bride. All-powerful steam, the noise of which salutes your ear as you enter, here performs a variety of offices: it diffuses a uniform heat to large rows of dishes, warms the metal plates upon which are disposed the dishes that have been called for, and that are in waiting to be sent above: it turns the spits, draws the water, carries up the coal, and moves the plate like an intelligent and indefatigable servant. Stay awhile before this octagonal apparatus, which occupies the centre of the place. Around you the water boils and the stew-pans bubble, and a little further on is a moveable furnace, before which pieces of meat are converted into savoury _rôtis_; here are sauces and gravies, stews, broths, soups, etc. In the distance are Dutch ovens, marble mortars, lighted stoves, iced plates of metal for fish; and various compartments for vegetables, fruits, roots, and spices. After this inadequate, though prodigious nomenclature, the reader may perhaps picture to himself a state of general confusion, a disordered assemblage, resembling that of a heap of oyster-shells. If so, he is mistaken; for, in fact, you see very little, or scarcely anything of all the objects above described. The order of their arrangement is so perfect, their distribution as a whole, and in their relative bearings to one another, all are so intelligently considered, that you require the aid of a guide to direct you in exploring them, and a good deal of time to classify in your mind all your discoveries. "Let all strangers who come to London for business, or pleasure, or curiosity, or for whatever cause, not fail to visit the Reform Club. In an age of utilitarianism, and of the search for the comfortable, like ours, there is more to be learned here than in the ruins of the Coliseum, of the Parthenon, or of Memphis." FOOTNOTES: [27] Civil Engineer and Architects' Journal, 1841. THE CARLTON CLUB.