Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
Lewes is in a valley of the _South Downs_, this town is at eight miles'
distance, to the south south-west or thereabouts. There is a great
extent of rich meadows above and below Lewes. The town itself is a
model of solidity and neatness. The buildings all substantial to the
very out-skirts; the pavements good and complete; the shops nice and
clean; the people well-dressed; and, though last not least, the girls
remarkably pretty, as, indeed, they are in most parts of Sussex; round
faces, features small, little hands and wrists, plump arms, and bright
eyes. The Sussex men, too, are remarkable for their good looks. A Mr.
Baxter, a stationer at Lewes, showed me a _farmer's account book_ which
is a very complete thing of the kind. The Inns are good at Lewes, the
people civil and not servile, and the charges really (considering the
taxes) far below what one could reasonably expect.--From Lewes to
Brighton the road winds along between the hills of the South Downs,
which, in this mild weather, are mostly beautifully green even at this
season, with flocks of sheep feeding on them.--Brighton itself lies in a
valley cut across at one end by the sea, and its extension, or _Wen_,
has swelled up the sides of the hills and has run some distance up the
valley.--The first thing you see in approaching Brighton from Lewes is a
splendid _horse-barrack_ on one side of the road, and a heap of low,
shabby, nasty houses, irregularly built, on the other side. This is
always the case where there is a barrack. How soon a Reformed Parliament
would make both disappear! Brighton is a very pleasant place. For a
_wen_ remarkably so. The _Kremlin_, the very name of which has so long
been a subject of laughter all over the country, lies in the gorge of
the valley, and amongst the old houses of the town. The grounds, which
cannot, I think, exceed a couple or three acres, are surrounded by a
wall neither lofty nor good-looking. Above this rise some trees, bad in
sorts, stunted in growth, and dirty with smoke. As to the "palace" as
the Brighton newspapers call it, the apartments appear to be all upon
the ground floor; and, when you see the thing from a distance, you think
you see a parcel of _cradle-spits_, of various dimensions, sticking up
out of the mouths of so many enormous squat decanters. Take a square
box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot
and a half. Take a large Norfolk-turnip, cut off the green of the
leaves, leave the stalks 9 inches long, tie these round with a string
three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top
of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the
same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a
considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the
hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have
sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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