The first approach to Dieppe is extremely striking. To embark in the
evening at Brighton, sleep soundly in the packet, and find yourself, as
is commonly the case, early the next morning under the piers of this
town, is a transition, which, to a person unused to foreign countries,
can scarcely fail to appear otherwise than as a dream; so marked and so
entire is the difference between the air of elegance and mutual
resemblance in the buildings, of smartness approaching to splendor in
the equipages, of fashion in the costume, of the activity of commerce in
the movements, and of newness and neatness in every part of the one,
contrasted in the other with a strong character of poverty and neglect,
with houses as various in their structure as in their materials, with
dresses equally dissimilar in point of color, substance, and style, with
carriages which seem never to have known the spirit of improvement, and
with a general listlessness of manner, the result of indolence, apathy,
and want of occupation. With all this, however, the novelty which
attends the entrance of the harbor at Dieppe, is not only striking, but
interesting. It is not thus at Calais, where half the individuals you
meet in the streets are of your own country; where English fashions and
manufactures are commonly adopted; and where you hear your native
tongue, not only in the hotels, but even the very beggars follow you
with, "I say, give me un sou, s'il vous please." But this is not the
only advantage which the road by Dieppe from London to Paris possesses,
over that by Calais. There is a saving of distance, amounting to twenty
miles on the English, and sixty on the French side of the water; the
expence is still farther decreased by the yet lower rate of charges at
the inns; and, while the ride to the French metropolis by the one route
is through a most uninteresting country, with no other objects of
curiosity than Amiens, Beauvais, and Abbeville; by the other it passes
through a province unrivalled for its fertility and for the beauty of
its landscape, and which is allowed by the French themselves to be the