ons. Both
piers are of great strength, and only four cents admission is charged to
them. Prince George built at Brighton a royal pavilion in imitation of
the pagodas of the Indies, embosomed in trees and surrounded by gardens.
This was originally the royal residence, but in 1850 the city bought it
for $265,000 as a public assembly-room. The great attraction of
Brighton, however, is the aquarium, the largest in the world, opened in
1872. It is constructed in front of the Parade, and, sunken below its
level, stretches some fourteen hundred feet along the shore, and is one
hundred feet wide, being surmounted by gardens and footwalks. It is
set at this low level to facilitate the movement of the sea-water, and
its design is to represent the fishes and marine animals as nearly as
possible in their native haunts and habits, to do which, and not startle
the fish, the visitors go through darkened passages, and are thus
concealed from them, all the light coming in by refraction through the
water. Their actions are thus natural, and they move about with perfect
freedom, some of the tanks being of enormous size. Here swim schools of
herring, mackerel, and porpoises as they do out at sea, the octopus
gyrates his arms, and almost every fish that is known to the waters of
that temperature is exhibited in thoroughly natural action. The tanks
have been prepared most elaborately. The porpoises and larger fish have
a range of at least one hundred feet, and rocks, savannahs, and
everything else they are accustomed to are reproduced. The visitors walk
through vaulted passages artistically decorated, and there is music to
gladden the ear. This aquarium also shows the processes of
fish-hatching, and has greatly increased the world's stock of knowledge
as to fish-habits. The tanks hold five hundred thousand gallons of fresh
and salt water.

Back of Brighton are the famous South Downs, the chalk-hills of Sussex,
which stretch over fifty miles parallel to the coast, and have a breadth
of four or five miles, while they rise to an average height of five
hundred feet, their highest point being Ditchling Beacon, north of
Brighton, rising eight hundred and fifty-eight feet. They disclose
picturesque scenery, and the railways from London wind through their
valleys and dart into the tunnels under their hills, whose tops disclose
the gyrating sails of an army of windmills, while over their slopes roam
the flocks of well-tended sheep that ultimately bec