A similar or even greater reform has been attained in the Continental towns. The discomforts of the old houses there were no doubt much greater than they were with ourselves; and, indeed, even now, if we abandon the tourists’ highway, or run away from the larger towns, a primitive and perhaps far from agreeable state of matters is discovered, the fact being that much of the improvement which has taken place is due to studying the requirements of _les Anglais_. But in the leading improvements the foreigners have led the van, and we may be said to follow at a respectful distance. * * * * * The tendency abroad is, as it is at home, towards building large establishments in which the rooms are reckoned by the hundred, one of the hotels in Paris, the Grand (most new hotels abroad now have ‘Grand’ prefixed to some other and more distinctive designation, but this is ‘The Grand’ _par excellence_), advertising as many as 800 rooms; another (the Louvre), 700,—figures which are beyond anything, I suppose, in England, unless it be (though perhaps not even there) in the Midland Railway Hotel, St. Pancras. There is at all times a greater likelihood of finding accommodation, and such accommodation as may be desired, in houses of such formidable dimensions; but the visitor’s importance suffers a shock: he becomes nothing but a number, and as such is termed by the _employés_ of the hotel, and shouted up and down the speaking tubes. * * * * * But a more important result follows from the immense augmentation in travelling, because the intercourse thus brought about between the inhabitants of countries originally differing very widely in their manners and customs has a direct tendency to assimilate not merely their manners and customs, but their modes of living. Hence the peculiarities of each gradually, if good, are adopted—if bad, are lost. We borrow from the foreigners, they borrow from us. Odd ways and angular corners get rubbed off, and Cæsar and Pompey settle down in time ‘very much ‘like,’ specially Pompey. Yet, when one leaves the home country, he happily discerns there are still remaining considerable differences between life abroad and life in Britain. Hotels on the Continent are conducted on somewhat different principles from those which at least formerly were customary in Great Britain; and until the dead level of uniformity be reached, it may not be uninteresting to recall some of the differences, and to mention circumstances attendant upon hotel life abroad, which, to those not very familiar with the subject, may be noteworthy. * * * * *