132 Notes and Reflections dunng a Tour .- — 



without aroma. When fruit is full grown, and the ripening 

 process has commenced, the removal of a few leaves where the 

 fruit is completely shaded is advisable ; but, even then, these 

 leaves ought never to be those which are so close to the fruit 

 as obviously to be the laboratories of its nourishment. 



Brighton to Dieppe. — Suspension bridges and piers, and 

 steam boats, have come rapidly into general use since they 

 attracted attention not more than fifteen years ago. Few im- 

 pressions combine the grand and the useful to such a degree, 

 as that of a large steam vessel sailing out from a pier or quay, 

 like a coach and horses starting from an inn-yard. What may 

 be the effect of steam on naval warfare, we suppose, cannot be 

 ver}^ well foreseen ; but if, like the invention of gunpowder, it 

 simplifies or shortens the work of destruction, it may be con- 

 sidered as a step gained in the progress from fighting by mat- 

 ter to fighting by mind. — In spite of a contrary wind we made 

 the passage in twelve hours, arriving at Dieppe at midnight. 



Dieppe^ August 31. — No two towns so near each other can 

 be more unlike than Brighton and Dieppe. The former is 

 the sudden result of immense wealth guided by the desire of 

 still more, and accompanied by a moderate degree of taste ; 

 the latter is the result of wealth acquired in former times, 

 slowly, and to a moderate extent, guided also by a desire to 

 profit, but accompanied by a greater proportion of taste, or, in 

 other words, of care in the expenditure, which leads to the 

 application of more thought to the design. That Brighton, in 

 its architecture and domestic arrangements, is higher in the 

 scale of civilisation and enjoyment than Dieppe, there cannot 

 be a doubt ; but that there is more mind, in proportion to the 

 wealth displayed, in Dieppe is equally evident. The high or- 

 namented gable ends, the cornices, the mouldings round the 

 windows, and the pediments over the doors, of even the com- 

 monest street houses, show that a house in Dieppe is considered 

 something worth enhancing in interest by ornament, and the 

 credit of having built it worth appropriating by placing on it 

 the arms or initials of the proprietor. 



The same cause which produced careful design in the com- 

 mon street buildings of Dieppe, produced curious design in 

 the holiday dresses and the carefully decorated persons of the 

 inhabitants ; and this cause also alike prevents both from being 

 much changed by fashion. It is only in rich and commercial 

 countries like England, or in countries of comparative equality 

 of rank and riches like America, where the habit of changing 

 the fashions of buildings and dress is general in society. In 

 Dieppe, and in all the provincial towns of France that we have 

 seen, there are a small number who, at a certain distance, follow 



