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hotels in Paris, as well as six thousand cafés and numerous restaurants. Concerning the latter: ‘The smallness of the quantity of solid food supplied is a difficulty for the English. A card is handed the diner on entering, containing a priced list of all the dishes supplied, and the waitress (for the service is performed by modestly-dressed females) marks those ordered, and expects a few sous to be left on the table for her.’ Murray goes on to say that: ‘Ladies may dine at Restaurants mentioned in this handbook without the slightest impropriety or feeling of annoyance.’
    In a possibly idealized version of street life we are told that on fine summer evenings, ‘coffee, ices, etc., are supplied out of doors, and the streets facing the principal cafés, the Boulevards, Champs Elysées, etc., are covered with little tables and chairs, occupied by groups of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen sipping coffee and ice, or smoking cigars’. Our traveller must have fitted with alacrity into such a scene, though his Baedeker advised tourists to ‘scrupulously avoid these cafés where the chairs placed outside in summer are in unpleasant proximity with the gutters’.
    Paris, to paraphrase Baedeker the greatest treasure-house of art and industry in the world, possessed ‘English hotels, English professional men, English “valets de place”, and English shops; but the visitor who is dependent upon these is necessarily deprived of many opportunities of becoming acquainted with the most interesting characteristics of Paris.’
    On installing himself at his hotel the traveller will of course note the following: ‘ Articles of Value should never be kept in the drawers or cupboards at hotels. The traveller’s own trunk is probably safer; but it is better to entrust them to the landlord, from whom a receipt should be required, or to send them to a bankers.’
    For those who would wander freely, a paragraph was provided concerning public safety: ‘In the E. quarter are numerous manufactories and the dwellings of those who work in them. Here was the hotbed of insurrection and the terror of Paris in troubled times.’ Baedeker remarks that the annual consumption of wine in Paris was thirty-nine million gallons, or thirty gallons a head for the whole population. He also tells us that the Parisian police ‘are so efficient and well-organised, that street-robberies are less frequent than in most other large towns. Beware, however, of pickpockets, who are as adroit as the police are vigilant, and are particularly apt to victimise strangers.’
    Our traveller on his perambulations may think to pick up a trifle or two at an auction, but Baedeker has another word in his ear: ‘Strangers are cautioned against making purchases in person, as trickery is too frequently practised, but a respectable agent may be employed to bid for any article they may desire to purchase.’
    Should the traveller wish to go to the theatre, warning is given against ticket touts, ‘who frequently loiter in the vicinity and endeavour to impose on the public … The attendants of the cloakrooms are often troublesome in their efforts to earn a “pourboire”. One of their usual attentions is to bring footstools, for the use of ladies; and they have a still more objectionable practice of bringing the cloaks and shawls to the box before the conclusion of the performance in order to secure their gratuity in good time.’
    The theatre is said to present a highly characteristic part of Parisian life, but, in some, ‘ladies are not admitted to the orchestra stalls’. Murray tells us that most of the forty theatres in Paris are devoted to light comedy with music, but ‘the subjects and treatment of many of the pieces render them unfit for the ears of English ladies’.
    As for the cafés chantants , spectators sit in the open air, and ‘listen to singing and music