hours; but they do not yet appear to have been placed upon it.
If, however, the speed be less, the security is greater. We seldom hear of accidents on the Continental lines.
There are peculiarities about the French trains which render it necessary to study the Indicateur very carefully, as some trains take only first-class passengers, and others have no first class; and although the first train going may be taken, it does not follow that it will be the first to arrive at the destination. A still further and annoying peculiarity is, that the railway company by first-class express trains will not always book to every station on the line at which they stop. Thus a friend left Mentone for Heidelberg. On arrival at Marseilles, he found himself compelled to book to Paris to get on. Thence he went to Strasbourg. Nor would it be possible to leave the line at Lyons, because the luggage would be registered to Paris.
The arrangements of the railways in regard to stations correspond in some degree with our own; but they have their specialties, into which I need not enter. The system of salles-d’attente and of registration of luggage necessitate stations being built on a much larger scale than our own. Sometimes tickets are collected before arriving at the gare, but more frequently are inconveniently taken at the narrow sortie or uscita from the passengers encumbered with luggage. Outside the station a host of porters and commissionaires of hotels is immediately encountered, and beyond this crowd, often largely swelled by mere idle onlookers, and perhaps by an occasional pickpocket, a long line of omnibuses and cabs. It is the practice in many, perhaps most places, for every hotel to keep an omnibus which goes to the station for every train. Probably there is some jealousy lest cab-drivers or general omnibus conductors might beguile or be bribed to beguile the visitors to certain hotels; but whether it be from this cause or from ostentation, the consequence is that there is waiting for employment a number of conveyances altogether out of proportion to the number of passengers requiring conveyance. I have counted at Mentone, waiting arrival of a train, twenty omnibuses, inclusive of a general one, with their respective drivers and conductors, and nearly as many cabs; while the number of passengers leaving the train would not exceed twenty in all, of whom probably not three would require conveyance. The maintenance of these omnibuses must be attended with heavy expense to the hotelkeepers; and although it can by no means pay for the expense, the charge against the visitor is heavy. The general omnibus, with a few specially-adapted cabs, would suffice in most places for all the traffic. It is melancholy to see the almost hourly procession of empty ‘buses, relieved only occasionally by one of them exhibiting in triumph a solitary occupant, and perhaps bearing five or six large boxes on its top. In Paris and Toulouse, and some other places, there are little district or family omnibuses holding four or six persons, unconnected with any hotel—a far better arrangement.
The charge for a seat in the omnibus is usually, in a town or general omnibus, without luggage, either 30 or 50 centimes; with luggage, 1 franc. The hotel omnibuses never charge less than 1 franc per person; and with luggage it is usually 1½ francs. If a party consist of four, it has thus to pay 6 francs or 5s. for the drive to the hotel, which is expensive; and it is much cheaper, if there be not heavy luggage, for which the cabs are seldom adapted, to take a cab. This cannot easily be done at leaving the hotel, as the guests are expected to employ the hotel omnibus, which is charged as matter of course in the bill.
We experienced at Rome a curious species of imposition. Not finding a carriage which would have taken our luggage, we entered the general omnibus, for which the fare for three persons was, the conductor told us, 3 francs, and drove to the house where we expected to obtain quarters. It turned out to be full, and I left the omnibus, crossed the street on foot and inquired at two hotels, at the second of which I found accommodation, and the omnibus brought across the luggage. The conductor demanded 10 francs for what he called the several courses, and I was glad, with the assistance of the landlord of the hotel, to arrange for 6 francs; but we were afterwards informed that this conductor was notorious for such practices.
It is sometimes desired to send luggage or boxes by goods trains petite vitesse. I had occasion to do so from Lyons to Mentone. A declaration was, by aid of the landlord of our hotel, filled up, containing, among other particulars, the general contents of the boxes which he sent to the goods office, and they were duly forwarded to their destination. The time taken in the transit varies and depends on circumstances—it may be weeks. It is therefore never safe to send off by goods train luggage which may be immediately wanted. The cost of carriage is so much per 50 kilogrammes; all below the 50 is charged the same as 50. For this weight between Lyons and Mentone, I paid 5½ francs. Between Paris and Mentone it would have been 7 to 8 francs; between Marseilles and Mentone, 3 francs. These figures will give an approximate idea of the cost. On leaving Mentone, the second season, I sent a box (under 50 kilogrammes weight) to Glasgow, to care of Messrs. J. and P. Cameron, railway agents, to go by petite vitesse to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Glasgow, where Messrs. Cameron passed it through the customs and despatched it to Edinburgh. The total cost was 6s. 10d. A box I sent from Naples to the care of a mercantile friend in Liverpool, by whom it was passed and forwarded to Edinburgh, cost for carriage, Naples to Edinburgh, £1, 2s. 6d. This amount embraced shipping agents’ charges, and was sent as freight. Had I sent the box simply as a parcel, it would have cost 5s. 6d. less, but the shipper would not for the lesser charge undertake responsibility beyond 40s.; and looking to the thievish character of the Neapolitans, I thought it safer to pay the additional charge. The difficulty one feels about sending off things to pass a frontier, is the examination by the douaniers; but I believe that some of the expediteurs, to be found in all towns, undertake for a small fee to get this managed. I presume they procure the passing through upon the footing of known or credited respectability of the party sending. I sent to Glasgow and Liverpool an exact list of the contents of the boxes, for exhibition, if need were, to the authorities. Some of the bankers—as, for example, Messrs. 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