calls loudly for reprobation. We conceive it to be the duty of architects, and of all professional men, to be ahead of their employers in point not only of scientific knowledge and taste in their art, but in the knowledge of what constitutes all the different comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of a dwelling-house; and we therefore think that they ought to refuse their consent to an employer who should propose to design or construct such unwholesome apartments as those to which we allude.

We had no time to look at the exterior architecture of Kemp Town, and other new buildings, in such a way as to receive lasting impressions from particular edifices. The general effect of Brunswick Square, and the terrace of that name fronting the sea, is grand, but would have been grander still if the terrace had been more distinctly broken into parts, by advancing, retiring, and high and low masses, without which no whole, however much it may strike at first, will ever be worth looking at for any length of time.

The area of the square is laid out by Mr. Stent, a gardener, in clumps so placed as to protect one another from the sea breeze. He mentioned that of the two species of Támarix, the T. gállica throve the best. He also mentioned that the common elder grew luxuriantly, and that there was a new Dutch variety in the garden of the pavilion which was found to grow faster than the indigenous one. Mr. Stent has a small nursery, No. 48., on the London Road, containing some showy flowering plants, and in very good order; his son is a professional collector and preserver of objects of natural history, and has a good many butterflies, moths, and Coleoptera, for sale.

Parsons' Flower-Garden, 105. Western Road, contains a very good vinery, with a stage well stocked with showy sorts of geraniums. We found Mr. Parsons destroying insects on some of his pot plants, by placing them in an empty barrel set on end, put ting on the lid quite close, and blowing in tobacco smoke by the bunghole. After they remain an hour, they are taken out, and syringed with clean water.

Rogers's Flower-Garden, 25. Regent Place.-There is a good vinery, and it contained an ample crop of grapes nearly fullgrown, but the berries of many of the bunches were shriveled up, owing to the mistaken practice of taking off the leaves in order to allow the sun to ripen the fruit. Taking off the leaves which proceed from or near the foot-stalks of any fruit, can only accelerate maturity by stopping the supply of nourishment; in consequence of which the fruit becomes shriveled, and, while its skin is coloured by the direct influence of the sun, its juices remain unchanged, or at least unsweetened and

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 impressions 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 very well foreseen; but if, like the invention of gunpowder, it simplifies or shortens the work of destruction, it may be considered as a step gained in the progress from fighting by matter 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 ornamented gable ends, the cornices, the mouldings round the windows, and the pediments over the doors, of even the commonest 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 common 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

the fashions of Paris; but the great mass are, and have been, clothed with the same forms and colours for centuries past. In France, the same holiday dresses often descend from the parents to their children, even in the lowest orders; in England, a grandchild in this class is more likely never to have heard of his grandfather's existence; for ignorance and the necessity of continual hard labour, both of parents and children, seldom allow the English mechanics to have more than two ideas, getting and expending. The great prosperity which is attending the cotton manufacture in France, will probably soon revolutionise the dresses of the country people, and give a reciprocal stimulus in industry to manufacturers and agriculturists; but, we hope, education, and their natural vivacity and love of amusements, which is in fact the love of life, the love of being convinced that we exist and are capable of being made happy, will prevent them from falling into that dreadful state of degradation, which is, or was till lately, characteristic of the Lancashire operative manufacturer.

There are very few gardens in or about Dieppe, which must arise from the want of wealth among the inhabitants; because the climate, unlike that of Brighton and other marine towns exposed to the easterly winds, is favourable to vegetation. We observed one or two very small spots curiously and carefully laid out, and a miniature orchard, containing, besides the ordinary fruit trees, specimens of the true service, medlar, quince, Spanish chestnut, and walnut. Each tree was planted in a circle of about a yard in diameter, edged with box in the circles were various flowers, and the intervening spaces were covered with gravel. The object evidently was to produce as much fruit as could be grown on so limited a space; every variety of walking backwards and forwards in the shade; and the fragrance and beauty of such flowers as will grow under the drip of trees. We looked into another spot planted with pear trees, trained en pyramide, and very neatly kept.

There were not many pots of flowers in the windows of the street houses; but such as we saw were characteristic of the present state of botanical taste in France, and of the state of the same taste in England about the middle of last century, viz. orange and pomegranate trees, the former with fruit and blossoms; the Capsicum Amòmum Plínii (Solànum Pseudocápsicum, Vol. II. p. 378.), beautifully covered with fruit, and indeed it is a most ornamental plant; one or two myrtles, and some stock gillyflowers and carnations.

The Dieppe Nursery. The only nursery that we saw was that of M. Racine, fils. This tradesman belongs to a local

family, who have been gardeners for upwards of three centuries; his father is gardener to a country gentleman, about three leagues from Dieppe, who is very old, and has occupied himself incessantly with astronomy for upwards of thirty-five years. M. Racine, père, works two hours a day in the garden, and the remainder of the time is with his master in the observatory. M. Racine's nursery may contain five or six acres. The chief articles cultivated are standard roses, of which he has nearly 500 varieties; but he also grows fruit and forest trees, and possesses a collection of green-house plants, and some American shrubs, of better species than we should have expected from the situation and the demand; in short, like country tradesmen in general, he cultivates something of every thing, including, not only flowers, but some descriptions of vegetables and fruits; as cauliflowers, lettuces, strawberries, and Honfleur melons. Roses and georginas, however, are the present fashionable articles. Among the green-house plants are several species of magnolias, five or six varieties of camellias, ten or twelve sorts of oranges and lemons; Laúrus, two or three species; Brugmansia arbòrea, Clèthra arborea, Ficus elástica, Rhododendron arbòreum, six or eight species of heaths, ten or twelve sorts of geraniums, and three or four genera of New Holland plants. The collection of georginas amounts to forty or fifty varieties, yearly increasing; tulips, upwards of 100 varieties, and the collection of other bulbs and of carnations in proportion. M. Racine informed us that there were several noted tulip-fanciers in Dieppe: we were introduced to one gentleman, and another was named to us who was what is called ruined by the fancy. For such a sacrifice we ought at least to record his name, which is Sibel.

Pro

M. Racine grows his standard roses close together, in beds about 4 ft. broad, edged with the fraisier perpetuel, or alpine strawberry, of which there are several varieties, some of them greatly superior to others, and propagated by runners. pagating this variety by seed, as is most commonly done in England, is considered by M. Racine a random method, which may produce good or bad sorts, and which does produce, most generally, many bad sorts, mixed with but few good ones. There is also a variety, valuable for edgings, which does not produce runners, and which is propagated by division.

But the most remarkable cultivation of this part of France is that of the Honfleur melon, which M. Racine also grows to a small extent. This melon is of an oval form, sweet, but not very high flavoured, and is eaten more as a legume than as a dessert fruit. It is extensively cultivated at Honfleur, near

Havre, for the Paris market and for Brighton: but it is also cultivated at Havre and at Dieppe; and by M. Racine, who showed us his melon-ground, and furnished us with an outline of the culture, as practised at Honfleur, which we shall give in our next Number.

(To be continued.)

ART. II. Remarks on the Education and Amusements of the Lower Classes. By WILLIAM SPENCE, Esq. F.L.S.

Sir,

As the general education of the lower classes, in which like yourself I take a deep interest, is closely connected with that of gardeners, and is, besides, a branch of that "domestic improvement” which the title of your valuable Magazine embraces, perhaps you will allow me to occupy one or two of its pages, in stating that all my observations, in my various tours in the south of Germany, fully confirm your opinion, expressed in recent Numbers of the Gardener's Magazine and Magazine of Natural History, as to the decided superiority of the German peasantry over the same class in England, in civility, information, morality, and, I may add, independence of character. Common labourers in Germany have repeatedly refused the money which I offered them, after asking questions respecting their occupation, or after they had rendered little services, such as putting to rights the traces of our carriage, &c. This never happened to me in England, and I am afraid, with Mr. Touchwood, would not now in Scotland, whatever might have been his experience there, on this point, forty years before his visit to Marchthorn and St. Ronan's Well. Every one, too, must agree with you, that this inferiority on our side (for a striking fact in proof of which, I refer your readers to a note I send you herewith, on the public garden at Frankfort for your Foreign Notices), so painfully mortifying to the English observer, is to be rectified only by the general and improved education of our lower classes; to which, if the one hundredth part of our money had been devoted, that has been wasted on objects of infinitely less importance, the British empire might have now been a perfect paradise. Much may yet be done; but it is clear that the education wanted is not the humdrum system of our ordinary village schools, which is a mere waste of time, but such a combination of the best parts of the plans of Bell and Lancaster, Pestalozzi and Fellenberg,