Most of the upper windows are wholly destitute of glass; but are smothered with clothes, rags, and wall flowers.  The fragrance emitted from these flowers affords no unpleasing antidote to odors of a very different description; and here we begin to have a too convincing proof of the general character of the country in regard to the want of cleanliness.  A little good sense, or rather a better-regulated police, would speedily get rid of such nuisances.  The want of public sewers is another great and grievous cause of smells of every description.  At Dieppe there are fountains in abundance; and if some of the limpid streams, which issue from them, were directed to cleansing the streets, (which are excellently well paved) the effect would be both more salubrious and pleasant—­especially to the sensitive organs of Englishmen.

We had hardly concluded our breakfasts, when a loud and clattering sound was heard; and down came, in a heavy trot, with sundry ear-piercing crackings of the whip, the thundering Diligence:  large, lofty, and of most unwieldy dimensions:  of a structure, too, strong enough to carry a half score of elephants.  The postilion is an animal perfectly sui generis:  gay, alert, and living upon the best possible terms with himself.  He wears the royal livery, red and blue; with a plate of the fleur de lis upon his left arm.  His hair is tied behind, in a thick, short, tightly fastened queue:  with powder and pomatum enough to weather a whole winter’s storm and tempest.[24] As he never rises in his stirrups,[25] I leave you to judge of the merciless effects of this ever-beating club upon the texture of his jacket.  He is however fond of his horses:  is well known by them; and there is all flourish and noise, and no sort of cruelty, in his treatment of them.  His spurs are of tremendous dimensions; such as we see sticking to the heels of knights in illuminated Mss. of the XVth century.  He has nothing to do with the ponderous machine behind him.  He sits upon the near of the two wheel horses, with three horses before him.  His turnings are all adroitly and correctly made; and, upon the whole, he is a clever fellow in the exercise of his office.

You ought to know, that, formerly, this town was greatly celebrated for its manufactures in Ivory; but the present aspect of the ivory-market affords only a faint notion of what it might have been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  I purchased a few subordinate articles (chiefly of a religious character) and which I shall preserve rather as a matter of evidence than of admiration.  There is yet however a considerable manufacture of thread lace; and between three and four thousand females are supposed to earn a comfortable livelihood by it.[26]