from June 28. to August 16. 1840. 289 



the gutters of all the back streets. The contents of the main 

 sewers shonld be filtered by being passed through gratings at 

 the points where they enter the sea, which would intercept more 

 bulky or light floating impurities, and furnish some manure. 

 The liquid would still be unwholesome, but it would be in a 

 state to be immediately diluted with sea-water to such an extent 

 as to take away all its noxious qualities, with reference to deposi- 

 tion or evaporation. The surface gutters at present empty 

 themselves into the river, in consequence of which its bed is 

 muddy and disfigured when the tide is low; but were the 

 contents of the sewers filtered, even if they did not empty them- 

 selves into the sea, this could not be the case. We stopped at 

 the Hotel de 1' Europe, a French house, at once comfortable and 

 economical. 



Dieppe to Rouen. — July 3. The delight which we experienced 

 on the first appearance of the clipped arbours and arcades of 

 trees, after leaving the town, can be accounted for, partly from 

 the effects of change of air, and partly from the love of the past 

 combined with the love of novelty ; this kind of villa being at 

 once old in its style as well as in reality, and new to us from the 

 rarity, or almost total absence, of such villas in England. Ad- 

 dison speaks of the powerful effect of things at once new and 

 strange; and we might here enlarge on the sentiment produced 

 by things old, and at the same lime new. 



The large proportions of the doors and windows in these 

 villas, and, as a consequence of this, the smallness of the number 

 of windows, and the absence of bold projections and recesses, 

 (not to mention the arched window-heads, upright central di- 

 visions, the windows opening like doors, and large panes of 

 glass,) show at once a marked difference between French and 

 English villa dwellings. There is something grand in the large 

 proportions; but the sameness in size and distribution of the 

 windows does not, to an Englishman, give the same ideas of ac- 

 commodation and comfort in the interior which windows of 

 different sizes on different floors, and large projections do. We 

 like to see, in a country house, a decided entrance portico, or 

 porch, in some conspicuous part of the elevation ; next, to be 

 able to determine by the size and disposition of the windows, 

 whether the principal living-rooms are on the ground floor or 

 the floor above. We do not expect to be able to discover 

 the windows of the drawingroom in the entrance front, but 

 most certainly we do so in the garden front ; and the smaller 

 windows in the second and third story always indicate the 

 dressing-rooms and bed-rooms. Very little of this is to be dis- 

 tinguished in the exterior of a French villa, at least in those of 

 the last century; in England, the living-rooms and the sleeping- 



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