In appearance, the hotels and pensions of Mentone are well built and substantial, with usually a coating of cement or paint of a light colour. All the stairs are stone—in one or two instances marble. The floors are laid with tiles, covered with carpets; the furniture good. The rooms are arranged in rows along each side of the passages, and communicate with each other. In one point of view, this is a convenient arrangement, for it allows any one to occupy two or more apartments _en suite_; but against it there is the objection that you are separated possibly from noisy neighbours only by a thin and imperfectly constructed door (of two leaves); and it is impossible by any precaution to avert this contingency, for there is a frequent shifting of visitors. A little annoyed by the vivacity of some neighbours who spoke in German at about the pitch of their voice, we tried to deaden the sound by hanging up a railway wrapper over the doorway. For such imperfect arrangements the hotels of Mentone are not singular. The same thing prevails at Nice, where, on one occasion, we had to vacate our rooms in consequence of a lady and gentleman taking lessons in singing in the next apartment—the pair going through the gamut for hours, one in a shrill treble, the other in a deep bass voice, and both of course regardless of the noise they created, or the inconvenience to which they were putting their neighbours. There is another structural imperfection which may be experienced in some of the Mentone hotels. It consists in the fire-places being placed in the outer wall so near the connecting doors, as not to admit of a party sitting around them in the English fashion. Besides being awkwardly placed, the fire-places are not furnished with grates for burning coal. On the occurrence of a stretch of cold weather, the want of coal-grates is felt to be a serious defect, for the heat derived from burning wood is very insufficient. The fuel ordinarily supplied consists of billets of old olive and fig trees, two and a half francs being charged for a basket which will last a day. I have known persons who used two baskets in a day, or upwards of four shillings’ worth of wood. As a kind of favour, during the coldest part of the season, we were, for a fair consideration, indulged with some pieces of coal to mix with the wood on the hearth, and in this way contrived to strengthen the blaze a little.