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 bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but
pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your
architecture. There! That's "_a Kremlin_!" Only you must cut some
church-looking windows in the sides of the box. As to what you ought
to put _into_ the box, that is a subject far above my cut.--Brighton
is naturally a place of resort for _expectants_, and a shifty,
ugly-looking swarm is, of course, assembled here. Some of the fellows,
who had endeavoured to disturb our harmony at the dinner at Lewes,
wer