Macquay, Hooker, and Co., Florence—undertake to despatch goods and works of art to any place in Europe. II. _CONTINENTAL HOTEL AND PENSION LIFE._ ‘THE inn looked so much like a gentleman’s house that we could hardly believe it was an inn,’ is the observation made by Miss Wordsworth in her _Recollections of a Tour in Scotland in 1803_, upon arriving at one which differed signally from others, where they could hardly obtain even sleeping room, and that of the roughest kind. Books of travels do indeed afford glimpses into the state of accommodation provided for travellers in those ‘good old times,’ but they are only glimpses. People, in recounting their wanderings in their own country, seldom notice such matters, unless they find them either rather better or rather worse than the prevailing condition of things to which the force of habit has reconciled them. In truth, the inns of Great Britain in the beginning of this century were what would now be reckoned of a very humble class, and were frequently planted and to be discovered in localities which would now be considered most undesirable, and which were doubtless chosen from proximity either to markets or to the stations of stage–coach departure and arrival, if they did not themselves create them, and in positions where stabling and a stable–yard might advantageously and fitly be placed. The introduction and development of the railway system have effected such an extraordinary increase in the amount of travelling as to have, in respect of such public accommodation, produced, or rather necessitated, a revolutionary change. The old little inn, with its rubicund jovial hail–fellow–well–met landlord and its horsey adjuncts, has in the larger towns all but disappeared, or, if left for the benefit of the antiquary as a relic and specimen of a past age, receives its chief patronage on market days from the farmers, who find it convenient to stall their animals in its stables, and enjoy a homely dinner at its moderate table. Instead of it, whole streets of hotels, in the best situations, and possessed of all the comforts with which modern civilisation can furnish them, are built and occupied, and in busy times are sometimes full to overflowing. The very nomenclature indicates a superior tone. The house ceases to be an ‘inn,’ and becomes a ‘hotel.’ The Saracen Heads, the White Harts, and the Georges give way to national or big swelling names. We are become imperial in the very appellations we bestow even on houses in which we tarry only for a night. * * * * *