There is a cheerful air, an air of magnificence about these superb kitchens, which would charm a good housewife. Here all the genius that can be brought to bear upon cookery is concentrated, and the head cook would not deign to notice any person of less rank than a baronet, while in superintendence. Although there are twelve hundred members or over, yet he is not responsible to any individual one, and the only authority in the club to which he has to bow is the eight or ten members of the House Committee, whose decrees even to this great being are arbitrary. The pots and pans are of an exceeding brightness, and the entire system is perfect. In one corner of the kitchen is a little stall or counting-house, at a desk in which sits the "Clerk of the Kitchen." Every day the chief cook provides, besides ordinary provisions which are certain to be required, a selected list which he inserts in his bill of fare--a list which is left to his judgment and skill. Say three or four gentlemen, members of the club, determine to dine there at a given hour, they select from the bill of fare, or make a separate "order" if preferred, or leave the dinner altogether to the intellect of the _chef_, who is sure to be flattered by this dependence on his judgment. A little slip of paper on which is written the names of the dishes and the hour of dining, is hung on a hook in the kitchen on a black board, where there are a number of hooks devoted to different hours of the day or evening. The cooks proceed with their avocations, and by the time the dinner is ready the clerk of the kitchen has calculated and entered the exact value of every article composing it, which entry is made out in the form of a bill--the cost price being that by which the charge is regulated--nothing is ever charged for the cooking. Immediately at the elbow of the clerk are bells and speaking tubes, by which he can communicate with the servants in the other parts of the building. Meanwhile a steam engine is "serving up" the dinner. In one corner of the kitchen is a recess, on opening a door in which we see a small platform, square-shaped, calculated to hold an ordinary sized tray. This platform is connected with the shaft of a steam engine by bands and wheels, so as to be elevated through a kind of vertical trunk leading to the upper part of the building; and here are the white-aproned servants or waiters ready to take out the hot and luscious smelling viands from the platform, to the member or members of the club who are anxiously awaiting dinner. Architecturally speaking the club houses are the finest buildings in London, and in the west end of the town, and in the vicinity of the parks they do much to beautify the city; these massive, richly decorated, and pillared palaces of exclusiveness.