_Hotels._—We English are not particularly popular on the Continent as travellers, though we are better liked in Spain and Portugal than elsewhere. Nor is the reason of our lack of popularity far to seek. We are apt to assume a demeanour and tone towards foreigners in their own country which imply a belief in our superiority, and a claim to assert priority for our own needs and pleasures over those of others. This attitude is worse than useless in Spain and Portugal, for not only is it ineffectual, but it turns otherwise polite and civil people against us. In Portugal an honest desire to please and serve will be encountered by travellers everywhere, almost without exception. But tourists must repay this, if they wish to travel smoothly, by cheerfully accepting the best that the people know how to give them, and must not claim to establish a new standard for themselves. The hotels in the smaller towns of Portugal do not exist for tourists. They live almost entirely upon commercial travellers, and residents, business, professional men, and officials, who board at the hotel table by contract. A tourist arriving at such an hotel will be civilly received, but no fatted calf will be killed for him, nor charged for, and the fare and accommodation considered satisfactory by the regular customers of the hotel must be good enough for him or he must go without. Generally speaking these are fair, even in the small towns, the beds being usually clean, if hard and skimpy of pillow; and of the dishes offered, some, at all events, will be found palatable, even to an untravelled Englishman. In any case, it will be useless to ask for others. These remarks are not applicable either to the hotels in Oporto and Lisbon, nor to those which specially depend upon visitors in search of health and pleasure, like those of Bom Jesus, Caldas, and Bussaco. In Oporto the Grand Hotel is said to be the best, but it still leaves much to be desired in many respects. The cuisine, however, is good, though there is a tendency to charge unduly high prices for extras, such as wine, table water, &c. The same may be said of the Hotel Central at Lisbon, where the cuisine is excellent and the rooms generally good, but the extras are charged too high. This hotel has been greatly improved of late years, and especially since the reclamation of the foreshore has done away with what formerly was its principal objection. It is very central for all the tramway routes, and for a stay of a day or two may be convenient. The noisy, self-assertive German commercial element is, however, too conspicuous and demonstrative to be agreeable to most English people travelling for pleasure, and personally I much prefer the Hotel Braganza, which stands on high ground overlooking the river, and is quieter than the Central. The Grand Hotel at Bom Jesus, in its way, is excellent, though purely Portuguese, and the proprietor, the son of the late Senhor Gomes, whose enterprise made