In describing these residences, which have necessarily been suited to very moderate means, I have thought you might form some idea of the greater habitations.  First and last, I may have been in a hundred, and, while the Italian towns do certainly possess a few private dwellings of greater size and magnificence, I believe Paris contains, in proportion, more noble abodes than any other place in Europe.  London, in this particular, will not compare with it.  I have been in some of the best houses in the British capital, but very few of them rise to the level of these hotels in magnificence and state, though nearly all surpass them in comfort.  I was at a ball given by the Count ——­, when thirteen rooms en suite were opened.  The Duke of Devonshire can hardly exceed this.  Prince Borghese used, on great occasions, to open twenty, if I remember right, at Florence, one of which was as large as six or eight of our ordinary drawing-rooms.  Although, as a whole, nothing can be more inconvenient or irrational than an ordinary town-house in New York, even we excel the inhabitants of these stately abodes, in many of the minor points of domestic economy, particularly in the offices, and in the sleeping-rooms of the second class.

Your question, as to the comparative expense of living at home and of living in Europe, is too comprehensive to be easily answered, for the prices vary so materially, that it is difficult to make intelligent comparisons.  As between Paris and New York, so long as one keeps within the usual limits of American life, or is disposed to dispense with a multitude of little elegancies, the advantage is essentially with the latter.  While no money will lodge a family in anything like style, or with suites of rooms, ante-chambers, &c. in New York, for the simple reason, that buildings which possess these elegancies, or indeed with fine apartments at all, have never yet been erected in the country; a family can be better lodged in a genteel part of the town for less money, than it can be lodged, with equal room and equal comforts, in a genteel quarter of Paris; always excepting the inferior distribution of the rooms, and other little advantages, such as the convenience of a porter, &c. all of which are in favour of the latter place.[17] Food of all kinds is much the cheapest with us, bread alone excepted.  Wines can be had, as a whole, better and cheaper in New York, if obtained from the wine-merchant, than in any European town we have yet inhabited.  Even French wines can be had as cheap as they can be bought here, for the entrance-duty into the country is actually much less than the charges at the gates of Paris.  The transportation from Bordeaux or Champagne, or Burgundy, is not, as a whole, essentially less than that to New York, if indeed it be any less.  All the minor articles of table luxuries, unless they happen to be of French growth, or French fabrications, are immeasurably cheaper in America than here.  Clothes are nominally much cheaper here than with