There is no doubt that sitting down at a table-d'hote is a ready way to ascertain the manners, tone of conversation, and, partly, the habits of thought, of a nation, especially when, as in the United States, it is the habitual resort of everybody; but truth obliges me to confess that, after a very short experience of it, I found the old adage applicable, "A little of it goes a great way;" and I longed for the cleanliness, noiselessness, and comfort of an English coffee-room, though its table be not loaded with equal variety and profusion.
The American system is doubtless the best for the hotelkeeper, as there are manifest advantages in feeding masses at once, over feeding the same number in detail.

A mess of twenty officers, on board a man-of-war, will live better on two pounds each a month than one individual could on three times that sum.

It is the want of giving this difference due consideration which raises, from time to time, a crusade against the hotels at home, by instituting comparisons with those of the United States.

If people want to have hotels as cheap as they are in America, they must use them as much, and submit to fixed hours and a mixture of every variety of cultivation of mind and cleanliness of person--which change is not likely, I trust, to take place in my day.

It is a curious fact, that when the proprietor of the Adelphi, at Liverpool--in consequence of a remonstrance made by some American, gentlemen as to his charges--suggested to them that they should name their own hour and dine together, in which case his charges would be greatly diminished, they would not hear of such a thing, and wanted to know why they should be forced to dine either all together, or at one particular hour.