``Before the tenant of the Hotel to
the Stork in this city.''
Whatever may be the ambition of mine host at Pompeii, it can scarcely be the fame of an English scholar:—
``Restorative Hotel Fine Hok,
Kept by Frank Prosperi,
Facing the military quarter
at Pompei.
That hotel open since a very few days is renowned for the cheapness of the Apart<p 194>ments and linen, for the exactness of the service, and for the excellence of the true French cookery. Being situated at proximity of that regeneration, it will be propitious to receive families, whatever, which will desire to reside alternatively into that town to visit the monuments now found and to breathe thither the salubrity of the air. That establishment will avoid to all travellers, visitors of that sepult city and to the artists (willing draw the antiquities) a great disorder occasioned by tardy and expensive contour of the iron whay people will find equally thither a complete sortment of stranger wines and of the kingdom, hot and cold baths, stables, coach houses, the whole at very moderated prices. Now all the applications and endeavours of the Hoste will tend always to correspond to the tastes and desires of their customers which will require without doubt to him into that town the reputation whome, he is ambitious.''
On the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1888 the Moniteur de l'Exposition printed a description of Barcelona in French, German, Spanish, <p 195>and English. The latter is so good that it is worthy of being printed in full:—
``Then there will be in the same Barcelona the first universal Exposition of Spain. It was not possible to choose a more favorable place, for the capital- town of Catalonia is a first-rate city open to civilization.
``It is quite out of possibility to deny it to be the industrial and commercial capital of the peninsula and a universal Exposition could not possibly meet in any other place a more lively splendour than in this magnificent town.
``Indeed what may want Barcelona to deserve to be called great and handsome? Are here not to be found archeological and architectural riches, whose specimens are inexhaustible?
``What are then those churches whose style it is impossible to find elsewhere, containing altars embellished with truly spanish magnificence, and so large and imposing cloisters, that there feels any man himself exceedingly small and little? What those shaded promenades, where the sun cannot almost get through with <p 196>the golden tinge of its rays? what this Rambla where every good citizen of Barcelona must take his walk at least once every day, in order to accomplish the civic pilgrimage of a true Catalanian?
``And that Paseo Colon, so picturesque with its palmtrees and electric light, which makes it like, in the evening, a theatrical decoration, and whose ornament has been very happily just finished?