of new hotels that strive to push themselves
into notice and patronage, by show architecture
and newspaper puffs.  JALABERT'S, on a
tarnished brass plate; that is all you see,—the
place might be a doctor's or a solicitor's; but
ah! what patrician grandeur there is in that
reserved waiter on the doorstep, the portly
man with the large whiskers who calmly
picks his teeth (he has turtle every day, I am
sure) and half closes one eye to look at the
street-scape as though it were a glass of
generous port.  I wonder, when I look at
him, whether he powders his hair to wait on
an ambassador, and whether he brings in
dinner in a court suit, and with a sword by
his side.

Jalabert's is dear, enormously dear.  What
else can be expected. A traveller sojourning
at such an hotel, acquires a sort of
collateral interest in the peerage, the
diplomatic service, the maintenance of our
institutions, and the divine right of kings.  He
who stays at Jalabert's is tacitly recognised
by the establishment as a NOB, and the dignity
is charged for in the bill.  They would perform
ko-tou there to the Emperor of China; they
would burn incense to the Grand Llama of
Thibet; they would light the pipe of the
Great Sachem of the Blackfoot Indians;
they would even sacrifice a junior partner to
Juggernauth; but they would charge for it in
the bill.  There is nothing unattainable at
Jalabert's.  There are bills in the books, I dare
say, running "His Highness Hokeypokeywankeyfum:
Jan. the thirteenth,—cold boiled
middle-aged gentleman, eighteen guineas;
baked young woman, twenty pounds and
sixpence; baby en papillottes, five pounds five;"
or "His Holiness the Pope [he was at Jalabert's
incog, as the Bishop designate of
Hylogiopotamus in partibus infidelium] Baldaquin,
eight pounds; paid for triple crown (packing,
wadding, and box), ninety-seven pounds
three; embracing toe (four times), fifty
pounds."  Such things must be paid for.
Honours, glories, adulations, incense, ko-tous,
toe-kissing are expensive articles.  You
must have a Jalabert's for such luxuries,
even as you have strawberry-leaves, gold
sticks, stoles, and dog-latin rolls of King
Richard the Second for peers, a bald-
headed man in spectacles at eight hundred
a-year to hold up the tail of the Right
Honourable the Speaker of the House of
Commons, and eight cream-coloured horses to
draw the Queen's coach.

A housemaid who had once taken service
at Jalabert's told me that the internal
arrangements of Jalabert's are splendid
beyond compare.  There are the largest looking-
glasses in the sitting-rooms that ever were
seen; only the apartments are so small
and dark, that those vast mirrors are lost in
obscurity, and waste their sweetness on the
dingy air.  The passages are all thickly
carpeted.  The service of plate is of enormous
value.  You dine there off silver and Sèvres,
and Dutch and damask.  You may have an
épergne, if you like, to yourself.  Every
refinement of luxury, every item to the most
infinitesimal of comfort you may, and do
have.  The head-waiter—I beg pardon—the
groom of the chambers—is a funded gentleman,
and has a villa, with a conservatory, at
Mitcham.  Wealth, pride, dignity, dulness,
noiselessness, and secresy, distinguish
Jalabert's.

Jalabert's is not for you or me, my brother.
It is as far beyond our reach as the entrée
at St. James's, or as a seat in the royal
pew at church.  I question even if a man
having twenty thousand a-year, not being a
Nob, could have the moral courage to drive
to Jalabert's.  His voice would falter as he
ordered apartments; he would call the waiter
Sir, and the groom of the chambers would
very probably say to him, "My good man, it
really appears to me that you must have
made some mistake."  Then he would drive
away, crestfallen and mortified, to Euston
Square or Paddington.  Why, the very
boots at Jalabert's must be a Nob.  The
boots! he must be called the Hoby, or the
Patent Leathers, surely.  He never whistles
or hisses while he polishes.  He wears a
white neckcloth, and reads the St. James's
Chronicle, perhaps.  The only way for the
plebeian to be enabled to enjoy Jalabert's costly
and exclusive hospitality seems to me to be
this.  Emigrate to America.  Make a fortune.
Renounce your allegiance, and become an
American citizen.  Get made, or make
yourself, a General of militia, a member of
Congress, or a secretary of legation.  Then come
boldly across the Atlantic in the first-class
cabin; arrive at Jalabert's with a profusion
of portmanteaux, and despatch-boxes, and
you will be received with open arms and
ledgers.  You may loaf in its lordly sitting-
rooms, you may whittle its carved fauteuils,
you may soil its Turkey carpets, you may call
the groom of the chambers Hoss, and the
landlord Boss; and the housemaids, Helps;
you may smoke in the corridors, and order
gin-slings in the coffee-room.  But do not
mistake me; do not imagine that it is in the
power of dollars, almighty as that power
is, to enable you to do this.  You go to
court, your name is in the Morning Post;
you dine at the Legations; you are a
member of the Travellers' Club; lords call
upon you; viscountesses invite you to their
parties, although you are an American, a
democrat, and your ancestor may have
been an Irish hodsman, a German tailor, or
an English convict, you are a Nob.  This is
the secret.  But let Raffaelle Sanzio, Esq.
painter, or William Shakspeare, player, and
member of the Dramatic Author's Society;
or Tycho Brahe, astronomer (assuming them
to be in life among us) let them, granting
them amplest means for paying their bills,
seek accommodation at Jalabert's.  I warrant
the groom of the chambers would look