2GI 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
and that there are three or four times as many houses now than 
then ; but, speaking here as an artist, I think it would have been 
better for Plymouth if it had grown with less rapidity, though with 
more beauty, and if stucco had never been invented. Does any 
body imagine for a moment that stucco, because there is such a lot 
of it, is an unmixed good ? It is very much mixed ; but I am 
bold to say that it is not an unmixed good, but an unmitigated evil. 
Our famous Hoe, of which we are yet so proud, was more 
picturesque in the time of Prout's boyhood than it is now. The 
rocks were unblasted ; there were fewer level and unbroken 
walls immediately above the rocks, and furze was growing on 
the slopes. The Eeform Bill was in nubibus, and Lord Grey and 
Lord Russell had not been heard of. It had not therefore yet 
become necessary to deform the Hoe by scooping alcoves out of 
the sides, and putting up mural tablets commemorating the services 
of those gentlemen. Strange that a national measure supported by 
two noblemen not distantly identified with Plymouth should have 
been commemorated, and the glorious traditions and history of the 
place utterly ignored. But I think since then we have learnt to 
value local memories more. Our Institution has shown this ; our 
Plymouth literature has shown this ; our public buildings (though 
I say it) have shown this. 
The view from the Hoe was more perfectly pleasing then than it 
is now perhaps. At any rate, St. Nicholas Island was less barrack- 
like, and the contour of the little island was more picturesque • so 
also was that of the Bovisand Heights, which were then without any 
forts or high walls. On the other hand, the loveliness of Mount 
Edgecumbe must, I think, have increased with the growth of its 
woods ; and certainly Penlee Point, where there were no woods, is 
more beautiful now than it was then. 
In the exhibition of Prout's drawings, which has been held this 
year in New Bond Street, there was a fine drawing (No. 19) repre- 
senting a " noble street -scene at Antwerp, requiring," as Mr. 
Buskin in his Notes says, " no effort to exalt, no artifice to conceal, 
a single feature of it. Pure fact — the stately houses, and the 
simple market, and the divine tower." Mr. Euskin adds: " You 
would like advertisements all along the house-fronts, wouldn't 
you] and a tramway up the street, and a railway under it, and a 
gasometer at the end of it instead of a cathedral ; now, wouldn't 
you!" 
