The Prince of Wales on Saturday opened another of those
monster hotels which have become a marked feature in London. This one, "The Langham," an immense building of portentous ugliness, with bow windows stuck on like wens, a lop-eared tower in one corner, and a portico which suggests no idea but weight, dominates the south end of Portland Place. It has the usual decorated rooms, some of them of great size, 30 suites, about 300 beds, and 600 chambers all told. There is a lifting-room, like the one which has just broken down at the Grosvenor Hotel, and the rooms are coloured by Owen Jones and furnished by Messrs. Jackson and Graham. To those travellers who prefer eating in a crowd at times fixed by other people, reading amidst a party, clambering up hills to bed, and waiting an hour for attendance, to the independence and quiet of smaller establish- ments, these hotels will be an accommodation. The Langham will of the kind probably be a good one, for the proprietors want it to pay, and it must pay well to yield a good dividend on its cost, 300,0001.
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