The "great" lift seems far more luxurious
than those at home, being all lined with crimson
velvet, ceiling and sides, the artist having
before his mind the model of a railway
carriage. We go up at a sort of express pace—à
vapeur, I believe—and not at the easy jog-trot
of the Langham or Charing conveyance. A
little occasional clank, like the "click-click" of
a capstan, hints a good precaution in case of
any breakage, when the "machine" would be
caught and held by its own teeth. The
galleries are all laid out in vast and most
confusing rings, and the doors are so neat and
slight-looking, each with its number and window,
that it is hard not to think of an opera
lobby, and call for the box-keeper. They are
placed two together, which adds to the illusion.
When night sets in, a general air of desertion
prevails; the "service," which is found in
a corner, disappears, and shuts its door, and
the traveller has been known to go wandering
round and round these blank circles, looking for
the "service," and for his key, meeting no one,
seemingly destined to "circulate" for ever in
these awful halls. At last he hears a step, and falls
in with a belated traveller, who tells him he must
try the "sonnette," and shows him a little
electrical "button" in the wall, a touch on which
sets free a whirring alarm, and soon brings a boy-
waiter in his shirt-sleeves from one of the doors.
The boy-waiter has a precocious French gruffness
added to the gruffness consequent on
being roused from his sleep. The number is
not in his beat, the traveller must go round
quite to the other side of the house, and then
he disappears "grommelant." There the
"button" is again found, and rouses another
sleepy waiter, who is equally dissatisfied, but
knows nothing of the key, which is at last
found with infinite difficulty. The administration
must have a malicious joy in inflaming the
natural exasperation of menials when "they hear
the bell;" and towards this end have hit on the
crafty device of making it jangle on by
electricity in the most ear-piercing and odious way,
until the servant comes to stop it by pressing
a button. Often do we see the summoned
menial rushing with a look of disgust and fury
on his face to stay this loathsome tintamarre;
otherwise the alarm would go on to the crack
of doom. This notion might be commended
with advantage to our monster London hotels,
where the impatient guest has to give a good
hard pull, to produce a faint and little regarded
twang.

About Paris houses there is rich indistinction
of detail—luxury of windows, balconies,
flowers, tracery, and golden inscriptions which
proclaim the name of the occupant with bazaar-
like magnificence. No better background could
be conceived. Every house has a picturesque
instinct of its own, and takes the most inviting
shape it can. Above all, how bright, how inviting,
the playhouses, when the doors have opened,
lamps blazing, the eager audience in military
queue. The police too—what sinuous cocked
hats and gracefully draped cloaks!

These endless miles of new stone palaces,
which the prefect baron has reeled off as from
a machine, will grow dark and grimy like
the old dungeon streets of the pre-Adamite
Paris. But our neighbours have a remedy,
which they apply in the most theatrical way.
A great crowd is standing gaping, while a
huge steam-engine is puffing and snorting in
front of the suffering house. Men in the grand
tenue, which is "of rigour" in the diving world,
are hung out on little stages, all up and down the
various stories, with hose and nozzles. Others
scrub and scrape with a will, and much self-
sacrifice, the law of their task requiring that
scrubber and scraper should work in the
full force of the deluge of water streaming upon
him. The theatrical part, however, was a huge
placard, announcing to the world that the attack
had begun "last night at six o'clock," and would
be concluded "that evening AT FOUR!" This
preciseness was amusing, but they kept their
word: and as I came by at the hour fixed, the
dripping men were down; the engine was there,
but the waters were gone; and the house had
quite a healthy glowing air after this wholesome
towelling. The process will do for bricks, so
the "director" informed me; and the hint
might be useful for the dark skins and faces of
certain London streets, grim with the dirt of a
century. But in street business we might
get an old woman's face full of "wrinkles"
from these frivolous French. As to watering
the roads, the great cart, which takes long to
fill and takes short to empty, is as sacred in the
eyes of dirt contractors and parish authorities as
the car of Juggernaut to that deity's parishioners.
Yet that system of little light pipes,
broken into short lengths and running on
casters, with a nozzle directed by its operator,
seems far simpler. It is surprising how deftly
he directs this apparatus—the snake-like pipe
wheeling lightly after him, while, as a carriage
comes in the way, he turns a cock and shuts off
the stream. So with this huge steam engine—
enormous, mammoth-like—which, on comparison
with the humbler monster that made his debût
in Park-lane, seemed constructed on sounder
principles. He of Park-lane had three rollers,
and ran, as it were, on three wheels, one in front
and two behind—but the Boulevard leviathan
towered loftily on two huge rollers, each his own
full breadth, and, moving forward slowly,
crunched everything contemptuously. This
creature sought the darkness; for his works,
if not evil, were noisy and inconvenient, which,
of course, to the Parisian, was worse than evil.
Each night, as we return at midnight, we find
him getting ready—stuffing himself with coal;
and presently see him grinding mournfully
along, hearse-like, an elephant lying coffined
within. The street lamps, too, of a green bronze,
most elegant in pattern, all but taking away the
mean association of gas, and which put to shame
our yellow tottering, "skimpy," and most
grotesque familiars, which seem to stagger
tipsy-like, and throw out spider legs and
arms.