splendid. While in the valleys may be found quiet | look of being over-built. Fielding greatly admired rural districts, with here and there a pretty rustic the verdant appearance of Ryde:-"The fertility of cottage, embowered among trees, and covered with roses, or a neat comfortable-looking farm-house lying in some bright verdant dale, and surrounded with abundant signs of moderate prosperity; picturesque homely villages, with their old weather-beaten churches, and often rich groves and woods reflecting in a brook or a pond their deep verdure, or perhaps through some casual opening among the boughs revealing a glimpse of the distant sea-recalling the memory of some half-forgotten or fancied picture, but glowing in colours fairer and brighter than ever painter's art could hope to imitate. These valleys are in least repute and are seldom visited for their own sakes; but they are frequently of exceeding beauty, especially if seen when "Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green, RYDE. In order to look even cursorily over the different scenes we have enumerated, it will be convenient to regard them apart. We shall commence with a stroll round the island. Ryde being the usual landingplace of the visitor, we may make it our starting point. When first distinctly seen from the steamer's deck its appearance is very promising. Along a hill side, of moderate elevation, rise in orderly clusters, or separately, the white houses from amidst dark masses of foliage. As we near it the houses begin to look bare and regular, the long black pier increases the form ality; the whole puts on too much the ordinary air of a watering-place. If it be low-tide the wide band of mud that stretches from the pier-head to the town reminds you irresistibly of the "impassable gulf (if we may so call it) of deep mud, which could neither be traversed by walking nor swimming," when Fielding visited the place; and thankful that you have not to attempt to traverse it by any such mode, you pace the dreary length of the pier-it extends some 1740 feet into the sea-and without demur pay the two-pence which the authorities demand from every one who seeks to enter their town. the place," he says, "is apparent from its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk, which in the regularity of its plantation vies with the power of art, and in its wanton exuberancy greatly exceeds it." All this is changed. The narrow lanes have become wide roads, and the large elms are mostly cut down. Still there is a good deal of foliage left to flourish, especially outside the town, but its wanton exuberancy is pruned, and it is trimmed and dressed into due propriety. On the whole Ryde is a cheerful town, and it is a great favourite with those who spend a summer in the island. The accommodations for visitors are on the most complete scale. Nine-tenths of the private houses are lodging-houses, and the shops are perhaps the smartest and best furnished in the island-a wide change from the time when Fielding was fain to put up with the hospitality of Mrs. Francis, and, as he relates, the butchers never killed ox or sheep "during bean and bacon season;" when he was obliged to send to a lady's house in the neighbourhood to beg some tea and vegetables-commodities that were not to be purchased in the town. In the inns, too-the class of houses which a traveller always regards with the most interestthere is also a great improvement. He need fear no such plentiful lack of entertainment in the island nowa-days. No one now finds occasion to complain of the contracted scale of either fare or charges in a Wight hostel. And there is a good deal of comfort in the knowledge of this. Visitors do occasionally complain very heartily of the charges in the island inns, but they ought not to forget that if the bill is heavy the fare is good. Poor Fielding had to pay a high price for very different entertainment. He had to lodge in a tumble-down tenement, get nothing eatable or drinkable but what he himself provided, hear constant complaints of the trouble he was giving, and finally have his hostess grumble at the smallness of the bill, though she had inserted everything in it she could contrive to introduce. Travellers ought to know of these contrasts; it would help to save some effusions of bile occasionally. Note what he says of this amiable landlady : Ryde is a neat regularly built place; the streets are "If her bills were remonstrated against she was wide and clean, the shops many of them handsome, offended with the tacit censure of her fair dealing; if and there are private houses in the town as well as in they were not, she seemed to regard it as a tacit sarits environs of a rather superior grade. It has a popu- casm on her folly, which might have set down larger lation of some 4,000 souls. There are churches, a prices with the same success. On this latter hint she town-hall, a theatre, and other public buildings, but did indeed improve, for she daily raised some of her none of them of any noticeable character. One of the articles. A pennyworth of fire was to-day rated at a best looking, perhaps, is the recently erected club- shilling, to-morrow at eighteen pence; and if she dressed house. The whole town is of quite modern growth, us two dishes for two shillings on the Saturday, we and has too much of the baldness as well as the pre-paid half-a-crown for the cookery of one on the Sunday; tension of watering-place architecture. When Fielding was here, in 1754, "the whole parish did not seem to contain above thirty houses :" there are now considerably above a thousand: but the place has the and whenever she was paid, she never left the room without lamenting the small amount of her bill, saying, she knew not how it was that others got their money by gentlefolks, but for her part she had not the art of it.' When she was asked why she complained, when she was paid all she demanded; she answered, 'she could not deny that, nor did she know she had omitted anything, but that it was but a poor bill for gentlefolks to pay.'" This last point, however, it must be acknowledged, you do sometimes hear gently suggested, even in these days of obsequiousness; but on the whole there is little other cause of complaint than the bill. And of that there is cause, perhaps; at least most travellers fancy so, but they may be mistaken. It is a rule in ethics, that the morality of a people is to be judged of by the code they recognise. In Sparta, says Plutarch, or somebody else, it was not disgraceful to steal, but to be detected in stealing. In the Isle of Wight, the traveller is regarded as an individual who comes there to spend a certain sum of money, and it is believed to be the duty of each islander to assist him in spending it as easily and speedily as possible. This is an obligation which every one in his degree early comprehends and faithfully performs. As the Spartan boy would undergo without flinching any amount of suffering rather than permit his prey to escape, so will the islander endure any rebuff without quitting hold of his. The hotels are but a part of the system; and that they come in for a larger share of the traveller's ire arises simply from their taking the lion's share of his gold. It will do him good to know, that their present method of procedure is only a continuance of the good old plan. Even the item of candles,' which commonplace travellers wonder to see in their bills, is as old as Mrs. Francis, and its presence there is no doubt justified as she justified it: "Candles! why yes, to be sure; why should not travellers pay for their candles? I'm sure I pays for mine!" In truth, the hotels in the ordinary route of travellers, are on too dashing a scale. They are often said to resemble gentlemen's villas in their appearance, and they require a gentlemanly purse to stay at. But they are very comfortable, and perhaps owing to the costliness of the establishment, and the comparative shortness of the visitor's season,' lower charges would not be remunerative. But, undoubtedly, a good many people are kept from the island who cannot afford to spend as much as they are told is necessary. It is for this reason that we have referred to the subject. We have often been asked, whether it is practicable to make an inexpensive tour in the island. It is, to a pedestrian, who can be content with plain fare, and cleanly, though rather homely, apartments. In almost every village there is an inn, and though they are inferior to the better class of village inns in the parent island, they are very bearable. We have tried, at different times, a good many of them, and most of the hotels, and confess to preferring the decent civility of the one, to the showier servility of the other. There is the advantage, too, of being in a better position for seeing something of the character of the peasantry-always a matter of interest to one who is desirous of understanding the tract of country he is travelling over. little inns, however, the stranger must reckon on some inconveniences, and though we have never found occa sion to complain, we have heard others complain of the charges, when compared with the entertainment. To such a grumbler we heard the other day an answer given at one of them, almost in the very words which Fielding has put in the mouth of Mrs. Francis, when "he made some small remonstrance:" "For her part, she did not get her livelihood by travellers, who were gone and away, and she never expected to see them more; but her neighbours might come again, wherefore, to be sure, they had the only right to complain ;" a comfortable doctrine for wayfarers. So much for the inns-it will serve for the whole island. BRADING HAVEN, BRADING. We will not stay now to speak of the pleasant walks around Ryde, though some of them are very pleasant; nor of the gentlemen's seats, though some of them are handsome mansions, and have fine prospects from their grounds. We will rather proceed eastwards on our journey. The sandy meadow, which we soon reach, called The Dover, was formerly distinguished by a number of small grassy mounds, which marked the graves of many of the seamen drowned in the Royal George, whose bodies were washed ashore near this spot. "We did not much like," said a fisherman, of whom Sir Henry Englefield inquired about these graves, "we did not much like drawing a net hereabouts for some weeks afterwards: we were always bringing up a corpse." The graves have long ceased to be distinguishable. From the Downs, from what is called the Sea View, and indeed nearly the whole way to the mouth of Brading harbour, the seaward prospect is very striking. The famous anchorage of Spithead stretches along, and there, and in the bay of St. Helen's, a glorious array of our noble ships of war may generally be observed, imparting a singular air of majesty to the scene, which is increased by the bold fortifications that guard the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour, and the harbour and town which are seen less distinctly beyond. From the slopes, a little more inland, the views are also often of much beauty. The view of Ryde (Cut, No.1,) was taken from one of these spots, not far from St. John's. About Puckpool Bay, and Nettlestone, the coast is high and rocky, and being richly wooded on the summit, and in some instances down to the water, has a very fine appearance, as you sail slowly under it. Brading Harbour is at low water a large muddy swamp, along the middle of which a narrow streamlet works its way to the sea. But at high-tide it seems a handsome lake of 800 acres area. At such a time it is indeed a very beautiful object. From the mouth of the harbour you see a really noble lake embayed between hills of moderate elevation, which are covered pretty thickly with trees, in many places down to the very.edge of the water; along the banks and on the sides of the hills are scattered many neat houses, and a church or two, and the head of the lake is surrounded by a lofty range of downs, whilst the surface, itself of a deep azure hue, glitters with numerous glancing sails, and is alive with hundreds of silver-winged seagulls. | white oxen: he succeeded at last, and by help of the To one who has not seen, or can forget, a lake among the mountains, with the wondrous aërial fantasies which play about the lofty peaks that recede, ridge behind ridge, into the far distant ether, this will, if seen under favourable aspects, appear of almost unsurpassable beauty; to every one it must appear very beautiful. An hour or two should be devoted to a sail upon it. The views from the surface are very varied; those looking northwards derive much beauty from the way in which the sea, with its ships, and the distant shore, mingle with the lake. The view from the head of the harbour is, especially at sunset, eminently picturesque and striking. There was a time when neither lake nor swamp existed here; but instead was a green and fertile valley. Through the midst of it flowed the narrow river, upon the banks of which stood a large and magnificent castle, whose owners were the lords of all these parts. Rich were they and proud, as well as powerful; but their wealth was ill-gained, and their power illexercised. From their towers they watched the adjacent sea; and merciless was the treatment of the ship they could by force or stratagem obtain possession of. Often as the walls of the castle witnessed scenes of splendid revelry, they as often, it was rumoured, beheld deeds of fearful wrong. But at last the long course of prosperity was followed by a terrible reverse. In rash adventures and domestic feuds the once numerous family had dwindled down, till the old chief was left with an only son. A harsh and violent man he was; and hard was it for any one to endure the fierce explosions of his anger, which seemed to increase in violence with his years. In one of these fits he drove his son from him with fearful denunciations. The old man died soon after; the son, it was reported, found an early and inglorious grave in a foreign land. The castle was abandoned to the reptile and the bat: a curse seemed to hang over the very walls; even the dank ivy shrank from them. Ruin wandered undisturbed through the lonely rooms, and over the mouldering turrets. Wild and unholy sounds scared the heedless rustics who ventured near after nightfall. But by degrees it was whispered that the mysterious beings who haunted the deserted mansion had been heard to utter a strange prediction, the tenor of which, as repeated in uncouth rhyme, was, that when the heir should be found, he should by means of twelve milkwhite oxen, recover the family treasure, which had been hidden by the last lord. Generations had passed away, and the story had come to be looked upon as an idle fiction, when a rough soldier-like man came to the island, and gave out that he was the descendant of the banished son. From an ancient crone, who, in order to escape the hands of the peasantry, who suspected her of intercourse with Satan, had taken up her abode in one of the vaults of the castle, he learned the terms of the prophecy, and by her aid discovered the well in which the treasure was concealed. Long and anxiously did he search before he could find the twelve milk hag prepared for the adventure; but on the very night when all was in readiness, one of the oxen died of some sudden malady. In vain did his companion entreat him to postpone the trial, urging that if the charm were broken the treasure would be irretrievably lost. Maddened by disappointment, he swore that he would have the gold, in spite of all the fiends who guarded it; and dared them to prevent him. He hastily seized the nearest ox he could find, heedless of its colour; but, in mockery, caused a white sheet to be sewn around it. Strong ropes were attached to the bullocks, and the chest rose slowly, but apparently without difficulty from its hiding-place. It rose steadily to the very brink, and the bold man had already placed his hand upon it, when loud sounds as of laughter were heard rising from below; and at the same moment, the rope which was attached to the sheeted bullock, snapped, and the chest fell back with a heavy plunge to the bottom of the well. Instantly the water began to rise till it flowed over the top in a thick black stream. And now the sky darkened; a fierce storm burst forth; the castle walls shook and fell in the fierce contention; the distant sea rolled over its ancient boundary, and soon the very site of the castle was invisible under the broad sheet of water. The lake was regarded as a forbidden spot. No fisherman cast his net in it; the mariner, as he sailed along the adjoining channel, kept as far as possible from its entrance, lest he should be caught by the sudden flaws of wind, or the more vexatious calms that often baffled the skill of those who were driven within the enchanted bounds: while at night a flickering pale blue flame was often seen playing over the surface,— a sure sign of the revelry of elfin wights. So ages wore away, till after saints and monks were driven out of the land, and it seemed as if the evil spirits had departed with them; the faith in these old tales wore out, and they were, by grave men even, said to be inventions. Then the skilful doings of Hugh Middleton, who had brought a New River to London, recovered much fenny land, and accomplished many other wondrous feats, suggested the project of regaining this land from the sea, and turning it to profitable account. Permission was readily obtained from the king to make the effort, and Middleton undertook the task. He procured workmen from Holland, who were accustomed to construct all kinds of marine embankments, and used his own best skill; and he succeeded "in gaining a very great and spacious quantity of land from the bowelles of the sea; and with banks and piles, and most strange defensible and chargeable machines, fortifying the same against the violence and fury of the waves," as is fully set forth in the patent of baronetcy granted by the king to Sir Hugh in consideration of this and other worthy services. Those who had laughed at the tale, and at the prediction which accompanied it, that the fairy sprites would never more yield the land they had seized, now laughed the more, seeing that the land was reclaimed. |