The private hotels are even more numerous than the private gardens, land not always having been attainable.  Of course these buildings vary in size and magnificence, according to the rank and fortune of those who caused them to be constructed, but the very smallest are usually of greater dimensions than our largest town-houses, and infinitely better disposed; though we have a finish in many of the minor articles, such as the hinges, locks, and the wood-work in general, and latterly, in marbles, that is somewhat uncommon, even in the best houses of France; when the question, however, is of magnificence, we can lay no claim to it, for want of arrangement, magnitude, and space.

Many American travellers will render you a different account of these things, but few of our people stay long enough to get accurate notions of what they see, and fewer still have free access to the sort of dwellings of which I now speak.

These hotels bear the names of their several owners.  In the instances of the high nobility, it was usual to build a smaller hotel, near the principal structure, which was inhabited by the inferior branches of the family, and sometimes by favoured dependants (for the French, unlike ourselves, are fond of maintaining the domestic relations to the last, several generations frequently dwelling under the same roof), and which it is the fashion to call the petit hotel.

Our first apartments were in one of these petits hotels, which had once belonged to the family of Montmorency.[16] The great hotel, which joined it, was inhabited, and I believe owned, by an American, who had reversed the usual order of things by coming to Europe to seek his fortune.  Our next abode was the Hotel Jumilliac, in a small garden of a remote part of the Faubourg St. Germain.  This was a hotel of the smaller size, and our apartments were chiefly on the second floor, or in what is called the third story in America, where we had six rooms besides the offices.  Our saloon, dining-room, &c. had formerly been the bed-chamber, dressing-room, and ante-chamber of Madame la Marquise, and gave one a very respectful opinion of the state of a woman of quality, of a secondary class, though I believe that this family too was highly allied.  From the Rue St. Maur, we went into a small country-house on the bank of the Seine, about a league from the gates of Paris, which, a century since, was inhabited by a Prince de Soubise, as grand veneur of Louis XV, who used to go there occasionally, and eat his dinner, in a very good apartment, that served us for a drawing-room.  Here we were well lodged, having some two or three-and-twenty well-furnished rooms, offices included.  From this place we went into the Rue des Champs-Elysees, where we had a few rooms in a hotel of some size.  Oddly enough, our predecessor in a portion of these rooms was the Prince Polignac, and our successor Marshal Marmont, two men who are now proscribed in France.  We