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son's and the large hotel known as Howard's, on the corner of Maiden Lane, but there are great numbers of respectable restaurants, both in Broadway and the neighboring streets, for almost the entire male population of New-York "down town," and they require a great many feeding places. In Maiden Lane, near Pearl-street, is the Franklin Coffee House kept by Clark and Brown, which deserves a passing notice, as a remarkable instance of stability in this constantly changing metropolis. It was one of the first dining houses established in NewYork, and it has been kept by the same proprietors in the same spot thirty years. It has always been a favorite resort of English merchants, and is the only place of the kind in the city where the traditions of the English kitchen are preserved in all their old-fashioned purity. It is one of the few respectable restaurants in New-York where they ignore napkins and eat with steel forks. The atmosphere of Clark and Brown's is thoroughly English, and when you enter its dining-room, with its John Bullish little exclusive mahogany boxes, that resemble church pews, you might fancy yourself in an eating house in the neighborhood of Threadneedlestreet, without any great effort of the imagination; and the bluff-looking landlord in his white apron and long carving-knife standing behind a sirloin of beef, with his back to a plum-pudding, will not destroy

the illusion. It is frightful to think of the rounds of beef and legs of mutton that Mr. Brown must have cut up during the thirty years he has been head carver at the Franklin Coffee House. The city East of Broadway has never been favorable to hotels, but, on the West side there are a good many large and flourishing ones; there are three in Courtlandt-street, one in Dey-street, three in Murray-street, two in Park Place, and three in Chambersstreet; on the East side of the Park there are the Clinton, Lovejoy's, Earl's, French's and Tammany Hall, all large and well-conducted houses, but not ranking with the great hotels in Broadway. The next hotel on Broadway after the Astor is the American, on the corner of Barclay-street; then comes the "Irving," which is a congeries of houses, rather than one house, and includes the entire block between Chambers and Reade streets. These houses were not originally intended for hotel purposes, but were converted to their present use, and amalgamated under the name of the Irving House, by their original proprietor, about five years ago.

The Irving, which is named in honor of the author of the Sketch Book, is an immense pile of dark granite, irregular in outline, and entirely free from architectural embellishment. It is one of the largest hotels in the city.

The external aspect of a hotel should be light and cheerful, and even a bizarre

and fantastical character would be much preferable to a coldly correct, and classical style. Formality and heaviness should be avoided beyond all other things, and therefore granite should never be used in the façade of a hotel, as its dark color renders it a most unsuitable material for a building intended for festive purposes. The external appearance of the Irving House is as gloomy as a fortress, and the Astor House looks more like a penitentiary than a hotel. In the new hotels which have been built on Broadway, and, in other parts of the city, a much better taste has been displayed than in the two great houses in question. White marble is becoming a very common building material, and when it is tastefully employed, as in the front of the St. Nicholas and the Lafarge Hotels, the effect is in the highest degree cheerful and pleasing. We cannot but think that a lively and cheerful aspect to a hotel must impart a flavor to the dinner, and be an essential aid to digestion. Brown free-stone is preferable to granite, but there is no material for a hotel to be compared with marble. And, for the same reason that white is desirable for the exterior of a hotel, it should be avoided in the interior. For white is only cheerful when it presents a broken surface, and is

subject to the play of light and shade. The interior of a house being always in shadow, the walls and ceilings should be vari-colored. Cold white walls and ceiling, in a dining-room, are enough to destroy a keen appetite and impair digestion. Pictures, unless of fruits and flowers, are very objectionable in a dining-room, if they are of a sufficiently positive character to call off the attention of the convives from the table, which should be the most attractive object in it. The æsthetics of the table are now more cultivated by our hotelkeepers than was the case a few years ago. The dining-room of the St. Nicholas is an exquisitely beautiful example of a banqueting room, and shows to what a high condition the fine art of dining well has already been carried in this city. The ladies dining room of the Astor House is also a fine example of the same kind; the proportions of the room are perfect, and on the walls are hung some paintings of a pleasing character, and of a high order of art.

A short distance above the Irving, on the opposite side of Broadway, on the corner of Leonard-street, is the Carlton House, and not far above that, a smaller hotel, at the dépôt of the New Haven Rail Road, called the New Haven House. On the corner of Franklin-street and Broadway is "Taylor's Saloon," the

largest and most elegant restaurant in the world. The building is a stately edifice seven stories high, fifty feet front on Broadway, and one hundred and fifty feet on Franklin-street. The Broadway front is brown freestone, richly and profusely ornamented with sculptures. The Franklin-street front is of pressed brick, with brown-stone window dressings. Taylor's is both a restaurant and a hotel. The saloon on the first floor contains an area of seven thousand five hundred square feet; the ceiling is eighteen feet high. There are two grand entrances; the floor is laid with marble tiles of a novel and beautiful design; the counters are of pure statuary marble, and ornamented with bronze and gilt figures, and supported at the corners

by kneeling figures of marble. The saloon includes two floors, and the walls are covered with mirrors in rich gilt frames; the chairs and sofas are covered with rich cloth of crimson and gold; and the ceilings are ornamented with gildings and scroll work of great beauty. This extensive restaurant is intended for ladies, and, like Thompson's, the other great dining-room for ladies in Broadway, has gradually grown up with the population of the city from an humble ice-creamery and confectionary to its present magnificent dimensions. Among the novelties of Taylor's saloon are two conservatories of great beauty, and a cut glass fountain seventeen feet high.

Further up on the opposite side is the Collamore House, a plain building, with a brown-stone front, on the corner of Spring-street. On the opposite side of Broadway, between Broome and Spring streets is the St. Nicholas Hotel, one of the last finished, and most splendid of all our public houses. The engraving of the St. Nicholas presents its front as it will appear when it is finished according to the original plan, but it should include the new brown-stone edifice which has been built since it was completed, and which extends to the corner of Spring-street, as it has been leased by the proprietor, and

will form part of this magnificent establishment. The actual extent of the house now occupied, is but 100 feet front and 200 feet deep, but, when completed, it will have a frontage on Broadway of 200 feet. The front of the St. Nicholas is the finest architectural feature of the noble thoroughfare on which it stands; it is constructed of a very fine marble, and is richly ornamented with bold sculptures of beautiful designs. The main entrance is in the centre of the building, through a portico supported by four Corinthian columns. The interior of this superb hotel is a brilliant surprise even after gazing on its elegant façade. The resources of the Upholsterer have been exhausted in furnishing its apartments, and all that carving and gilding can do to give gorgeousness to its appointments has been done. The finest of porcelain, the richest of cut glass, and the most brilliant of Sheffield ware decorate its tables. Its "bridal chamber," one of the newly invented institutions of hotel life, is scandalously splendid, and timid brides are said to shrink aghast at its marvels of white satin and silver brocade. It was supposed when the St. Nicholas was first thrown open to the wondering admiration of the select multitude of ladies and gentlemen who were invited to inspect its sparkling apartments, that luxury could

no farther go, that there was no beyond, in the progress of refinement, to this latest offspring of the arts. But the next hotel will, doubtless, go a step beyond, and dazzle us with splendors of furniture before unheard of.

On the corner of Spring-street above the St. Nicholas, is the new hotel called, in compliment to our great historian, the Prescott House. The Prescott House is built of brick, with cast-iron ornamental heads to the windows. It is not so extensive as some of its neighbors, being but 100 feet on Spring-street, by fifty feet on Broadway. On the opposite side, on the corner of Prince-street, is the Metropolitan Hotel, which presents a frontage on Broadway of 300 feet and six stories; this front is of brown free-stone, while that on Prince-street is of brick with stone dressings. The dining-room of the Metropolitan is on the Prince-st. side, and is one hundred and fifty feet long by forty feet in breadth. It is said there are more than twelve miles of water and gas pipe

in this immense hotel, and two hundred and fifty servants. It has accommodations for one thousand guests. In the quadrangular court of the hotel is Niblo's theatre, the entrance to which is through a passage way in the centre of the Broadway front. The whole interior arrangements of the hotel are on a scale of magnificence corresponding with its grandeur of proportions.

Above the Metropolitan, on the opposite side of Broadway, and opposite Bondstreet, is the Bond-street House, a small family hotel, with a plain white marble front; and, above that, is the New York Hotel, an immense brick structure, which occupies nearly the entire block, bounded by Washington and Waverley Places, and Broadway and Mercer-street. It is a

hotel of the first class, both in extent and character, and has been built about ten years.

The Lafarge Hotel is now in course of erection, in front of Metropolitan, late Tripler's Hall; it has a façade of white

marble, of a highly ornamental character, designed by James Renwick, 125 feet in extent. This hotel will contain two hundred and twenty-eight separate apartments, and will cost about two hundred thousand dollars.

The Astor Place Hotel, directly opposite Astor Place, in Broadway, has been formed by the union of two granite houses.

The St. Denis is a rather outré and dreamy-looking building, six stories high, on the corner of 11-th street and Broadway, directly opposite Grace Church. Its external character, though bizarre and fantastical in the extreme, is very far from being unpleasing. The profuse ornamentations are not of a costly character, being castings of cement. The defect of the building, architecturally speaking, is the want of a door, there being nothing to distinguish the main entrance from the windows on the same floor.

On the corner of Broadway and Union Place, and fronting Union Square, is the Union Place Hotel, another first-class house. Further up Broadway, on the corner of 20th-street, is the Gramercy Hotel, the terminus of Broadway Hoteldom at the present time; but it is not likely to remain so much longer, for our god Terminus does not stay long in one place, in these progressive times, but keeps jogging on with his carpet-bag in hand.

The Clarendon is a fine large brick building in the Elizabethan style, on the corner of 17th-street and Fourth Avenue, just above Union Square. and. though

neither the largest nor most pretending of our new hotels, it is probably one of the most comfortable and elegant of the whole brood.

Hotel life in New-York is as varied as the character of the population; visitors from any part of Europe may here find a home where they will hear their own language spoken, imbibe the potations of their father-land and inhale the flavor of their native dishes. But French is the predominant style of our public cuisine, and the language of diplomacy is also that of the bills of fare on all our hotel tables, except the Astor House, where they give English names to all dishes that are capable of translation. There is a Spanish hotel in Fulton-street, a Café de Paris, a Tortoni, and a Rocher de Cancale in Broadway, an Italian restaurant, strongly flavored with Bologna_sausages, in William-street; a Pension Française in almost every street, while all the different tribes of Scandinavia and Germany have their distinct houses of refreshment kept by their own countrymen. The hotel population of New-York would alone form a city of no mean size; it probably does not fall much short of ten thousand.

Hotels garni are very numerous, and some of them are on a large and splendid scale, like Julien's hotel in Washington Place; but these do not properly come under the head of hotels and restaurants.

Much fault has been found, by a certain class of people who regard every deviation