And indeed it is the harp of his country that is now heard, and not his labored oriental poems.

It is a very quiet, retired country lane that we followed to Corsham, famous for the stately seat of Lord Metheun. Corsham Court is an Elizabethan mansion of vast extent which has many noted pictures in its galleries, among them “Charles I. on Horseback,” which is counted the masterpiece of Van Dyck. Near the park entrance is the almshouse, with its timeworn gables of yellow stone against the dull red of the tile roofing. Just inside is the chapel, always present in early English buildings, a fine Jacobean room with a double-deck pulpit and a gallery behind an intricately carved oaken screen. One finds these almshouses in many of the older English towns. They were founded some centuries ago by charitably inclined persons who left legacies for the purpose, and are maintained for a limited number of old people—women at Corsham—who are admitted under certain carefully specified conditions. Each inmate has a small, fairly comfortable room and usually a little garden plot. We saw such houses at Coventry, Campden and Corsham—all substantially built and unique in their architecture. St. Cross at Winchester and Leicester’s Hospital at Warwick are similar institutions. There is always a long waiting-list of applicants for the charity.

At the queer little village of Yatton Keynell, as odd and uncouth as its name, we found another of the melancholy instances so common in England of the degeneration of a fine manor into a slovenly farm tenement. We drove into the ill-kept farmyard and picked our way carefully through the debris to the front entrance, a solid oaken door under a curious little porch. The house is a good example of the substantial mansion of the old-time English squire, and though still quite extensive, is of only half its original size. It has a solid oak staircase and many touches of its old-time beauty remain. While it has no history or tradition, it is worthy a visit from anyone interested in English domestic architecture and in a rather melancholy phase of social conditions.

A combe, in west of England parlance, is a deep, ravinelike valley. Such a description certainly fits the site of Castle Combe, surely one of the loveliest villages in Wiltshire, or all of England, for that matter. We carefully descended a steep, narrow road winding through the trees that cover the sharply rising hillsides, and paused before the queer old market cross of the little town. Nowhere did we find a more perfect and secluded gem of rural England. The market cross, whose quadrangular roof of tile, with a tall slender shaft rising from the center, is supported on four heavy stone pillars, looks as if it had scarce been touched in the four hundred years during which it has weathered sun and rain. Near by is the solid little church with pinnacled and embattled tower, still more ancient. Along shady lanes leading from the market place are cozy thatched cottages, bright with climbing roses and ivy, and others of gray stone seem quite as bleak as the cross itself. Nothing could be more picturesque than the gateway to the adjoining park—the thatched roof of the lodgekeeper’s house sagging from the weight of several centuries. On either side of the village rise the steep, heavily wooded hills and from the foot of the glen comes up the murmur of the stream. Verily, there is an unknown England—the guide-books have nothing of Castle Combe, and unless the wayfarer comes upon it like ourselves, he will miss one of the most charming bits of old-world life in the Kingdom. And it is all unconscious of its charm; excepting an occasional incursion of English trippers, visitors are few.

How lightly the rarest antiquities were valued in England until yesterday is shown by the remarkable history of the Saxon chapel at Bradford-on-Avon. This tiny church, believed to be the oldest in England, was completely lost among the surrounding buildings; as the discoverer, Rev. Laurence Jones, says: “Hemmed in on every side by buildings of one kind or another, on the north by a large shed employed for the purposes of the neighbouring woolen manufactory; on the south by a coach-house and stables which hid the south side of the chancel, and by a modern house built against the same side of the nave; on the east by what was formerly, as Leland tells us, ‘a very fair house of the building of one Horton, a rich clothier,’ the western gable of which was within a very few feet of it, and hid it completely from the general view—the design and nature of the building entirely escaped the notice of the archaeologist.”

About 1865 Rev. Jones, then Vicar of Bradford, was led to his investigations by the accidental discovery of stone figures, evidently rude Saxon carvings, during some repairs to the school-room. From this beginning the building was gradually disentangled from the surrounding structures; excavations were made and many old carvings unearthed, and in short the chapel began to assume its present shape. The history of the church is of course very obscure, though Rev. Jones with great ingenuity and research shows that there is good reason to believe that it was founded by St. Aldhelm, who died in 709. If this be true, the chapel is twelve hundred years old and contests in antiquity with St. Augustine’s of Canterbury.

Architecturally, the little church is the plainest possible—it comprises a tiny entrance porch, nave and chancel. The most remarkable feature of the nave is its great height as compared with its other dimensions, being the same as its length, or about twenty-five feet. The doors are very narrow, barely wide enough for one person at a time, and windows mere slits through which the sunlight struggled rather weakly with the gloom of the interior. The chapel is a regularly constituted Church of England and services are held in it once a year. With all its crudeness, it serves as one of the milestones of the progress of a new order of things in Britain, and a space of only three centuries separates this poor little structure from the cathedrals!

The youth who acted as guide led us into his cottage near at hand when we asked for picture cards of the chapel. His eyes brightened noticeably when he learned we were from America. “Ah,” said he, “I am going there next spring; my brother is already there and doing well. Do you know that more than a hundred people have gone from Bradford to America in the past year? And more are going. There is no chance for a common man in England.” No chance for a common man in England!—How often we heard words to that effect during our pilgrimage.

Bradford has another unique relic in the “tithe barn” built in 1300, a long low structure with enormously thick, heavily buttressed walls and ponderous roof—solid oaken timbers overlaid with stone slabs. Its capacious dimensions speak eloquently of the tribute the monks were able to levy in the good old days, for here the people who could not contribute money brought their offerings in kind and the holy fathers were apparently well prepared to receive and care for anything of value. Today it serves as a cow-barn for a nearby farmer.

We leave Bradford-on-Avon for Marlborough over a fine though rather undulating road. We pause at Devizes to read the astonishing inscription on the town cross:

“The mayor and corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of this building to transmit to future times the record of an awful event which occurred in this market place in the year 1753, hoping that such record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously invoking Divine vengeance or calling on the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud. On Thursday, the 17th of January 1753, Ruth Pierce of Pottern in this county agreed with three other women to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each paying her due proportion towards the same. One of these women collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency and demanded of Ruth Pierce what was wanting to make good the amount. Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share and said she wished she might drop down dead if she had not. She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation and terror of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having the money concealed in her hand.”

Surely the citizens of Devizes, with such a warning staring them in the face every day, must be exemplary disciples of George Washington—and what a discouraging place the town would be for the headquarters of an American trust!

The town gets its name from having been a division camp back in Roman days. It figured much in the civil war, its castle, of which no traces now remain, holding out for the king until taken by Cromwell in person. There are in the town two of the finest churches in Wiltshire, second only to Salisbury Cathedral. Nor is it to be forgotten that the parents of Sir Thomas Lawrence were at one time keepers of the Bear Inn at Devizes, and the son acquired his first fame by sketching the guests and reciting poetry to them. He lived here until eighteen years of age, when he entered the Royal Academy at London.

It was a surprise to find at Avebury, a lonely village a few miles farther on, relics of a pre-historic stone circle that completely dwarf the giants of Stonehenge. This great circle was about three-quarters of a mile in circumference and three hundred years ago was nearly perfect. The mighty relics were destroyed by the unsentimental vandals of the neighborhood, and it is said that most of the cottages in the village were built from these stones. Some of them were buried to clear the land of them! Barely a dozen remain of more than six hundred monoliths that stood in the circle as late as the reign of Elizabeth; and the destruction ceased only fifty years ago. The stones are ruder and less symmetrical than those of Stonehenge, but their individual bulk averages greater—mighty fragments of rock weighing from fifty to sixty tons each. The Avebury circle is supposed to have been a temple of prehistoric sun worshipers, but its crudity indicates that it is far older than Stonehenge.

A short run across the downs soon brought us to Marlborough, a name more familiar as that of a dukedom than of a town. But the Duke of Marlborough lives at Blenheim, forty miles away, and has no connection with the Wiltshire town. Its vicissitudes were those of almost any of the older English towns, though it had the rare distinction of having its castle destroyed before the time of Cromwell. It has little of great antiquity, since a fire two hundred and fifty years ago totally wiped out the town that then existed. In the coaching days, it was an important point on the London and Bath road; and perhaps the motor car may bring back something of its old-time prosperity. The Ailesbury Arms, where we stopped for our belated lunch, appeared to be a most excellent hotel and is the only one I recollect which had a colored man in uniform at the door.

Immediately adjoining Marlborough is Savernake Forest, on the estate of the Marquis of Ailesbury, which is said to be the only forest of any extent possessed by a subject. This park is sixteen miles in circumference, and its chief glory is a straight four-mile drive between rows of enormous beeches. This splendid avenue is not “closed to motors” (the inscription that greeted us at the entrance of so many private parks), and our car carried us soberly enough through the sylvan scene, which is diversified with many grassy glades. There are several famous trees, one of which, the King’s Oak, is twenty-four feet in circumference. Savernake is pleasant and impressive in summer time, but its real beauty must be most apparent in autumn, when, as an English writer describes it, “it is a blaze of crimson and yellow—the long shadows and golden sunlight giving the scene a painted, almost too brilliant effect.”

It is growing late and we must not loiter longer by the way if we are to reach Bournemouth for the night. We sweep across the great open Salisbury Plain past Stonehenge and down the sweet vale of the Avon until the majestic spire of Salisbury pierces the sky. Then southward through Ringwood to Christchurch, where we catch a glimpse of the scant fragments of the castle and the abbey church, with its melancholy memorial to Shelley. A few minutes more on the fine ocean road brings us into Bournemouth.

XVI
DORSET AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT

Of the hundreds of hotels whose hospitality we enjoyed—or endured—in Britain, no other was so barbarously gorgeous as the Royal Bath at Bournemouth. The furnishings were rich, though verging to some extent on the gaudy, and the whole place had an air of oriental splendor about it made the more realistic by “fairy grottoes” and gilded pagodas on the grounds. It is a rather low building of great extent, with wide, thickly carpeted halls in which bronze and plaster statuettes and suits of old plate armor are displayed. At the head of the stairs a tablet enumerates a few of the patrons of quality—an imposing list indeed—which we may partly transcribe here. The large gilt letters solemnly assure us that “This Hotel has been patronised by H. R. H. the PRINCE OF WALES, H. R. H. the DUCHESS OF ALBANY, and other Members of the ROYAL FAMILY: H. I. H. the EMPRESS EUGENIE, H. M. the KING OF THE BELGIANS, H. R. H. CROWN PRINCE OF SWEDEN and NORWAY, H. R. H. the CROWN PRINCESS OF DENMARK, H. R. H. PRINCE ALBRECHT OF PRUSSIA, Regent of Brunswick; the Leading Statesmen, and the most Eminent and Distinguished Personages visiting Bournemouth.” Verily a list of notables that might well overawe a common American citizen.

But after all, the pretensions of the Royal Bath are not altogether unwarranted, for its foundation, in 1838, marked the beginning of Bournemouth itself. It is since then that this handsome watering-place—it has no superior in the Kingdom—has come into existence. In few other modern resort towns has the original idea been so well carried out. The pine trees planted by the early promoters now form a grove through which runs the magnificent promenade along the sea. The citizens are mainly of the wealthier class and there are many fine private residences. There are, of course, the usual adjuncts of the watering-place, such as the amusement pier, promenades, public gardens and palatial hotels. The climate, which is as salubrious as that of Torquay, brings to the town many people seeking health. Bournemouth, of course, has little of history or tradition. In the churchyard surrounding its imposing modern church is buried Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her parents, William and Mary Godwin.

I have not intended to intimate that the Royal Bath, with all its splendor, is anything but comfortable and first-class. Our tall casement windows opened directly on the sea, and the high ceilings of our room were decorated with plaster bosses and stencilled festoons of roses. The view at sunset over the terrace, down the sandy beach and sweeping over the sail-flecked waters, was at once restful and inspiring. The crowd thronging the promenades was in a gay, careless mood; children played in the sand in unrestrained joy, while the many colored lights on the pier and the lanterns of the boats gave a touch of brilliancy to the scene. It all seemed to strangely contrast with the spirit of the England we were most familiar with, for Bournemouth belongs to another day and generation than the England of our pilgrimage.

The Isle of Purbeck is no island at all—even as the “Isles,” Athelney and Avilion, in no wise fulfill the geographical requirements of islands. It is a small peninsula of Southern Dorset, and at its very center stands one of the most remarkable of the English castles. Thither we go, following the coast from Bournemouth through the somber little town of Wareham; from thence southward over heather-mottled hills, and ere long we catch sight of the gigantic mound upon which are the straggling fragments of Corfe Castle. Before the castle gate stands Corfe village, a group of plain cottages, seemingly as ancient as the ruin overlooking them. All are mellowed by the touch of time; there is naught to mar the harmony of the dull silver grays and moss greens of the cottages, the solid old church or of the ruins which tower in sharp outline against a pale, blue sky.

The entrance to the castle court is well above the roofs of the cottages and is severed from the village by a deep fosse crossed by a high-arched stone bridge. The gate is flanked by two huge round towers, but from the inside one sees the castle proper, perched on the summit of the mound, its very foundation stones high above the gate towers. Standing among the stupendous ruins we realize the amazing strength the castle possessed, both in construction and position. Huge fragments of walls and towers rise above us like thunder-riven cliffs, their bald outlines softened in places by the clinging ivy. Here and there masses of fallen masonry are lying about like boulders, so solidly does the mass cling together. So ruinous are the walls that it is difficult to identify the different apartments, and even the antiquarians have trouble in restoring the original plan of the castle. The keep itself, generally intact, is shattered, one fragment, almost the entire height of the structure, standing curiously like a huge chimney. Clearly enough, an explosive was the agent of destruction here—Corfe Castle was razed with gunpowder by express order of Cromwell’s Parliament.

But before we go shall we ask the story of Corfe? The tales of the abbeys and castles are much alike and their end nearly always the same—dismantled by Henry, destroyed by Cromwell. Still, Corfe is very old; its records go back to Saxon times. How weird it is to think that in front of the towers that grimly guard the entrance King Edward the Martyr was stabbed by order of his stepmother, Elfrida, as he paused to quaff a goblet of wine. It happened more than a thousand years ago, and from that time until Cromwell’s gunpowder sent walls and towers tottering to destruction, the sequestered castle was the scene of intermittent turmoil and bloodshed. Sir Christopher Hatton built the more modern portions during the reign of Elizabeth, but Corfe brought him only trouble. In 1633 it passed from the possession of his descendant to Sir John Bankes, a loyal supporter of King Charles, and while he was active in court and field, his energetic wife held the castle against all comers. One siege she repulsed and the surrender in 1646 was brought about only by treachery. Brave Lady Bankes! The story of her gallant defense will not be forgotten while a single fragment of the old fortress remains on its bleak, wind-swept hill.

But they have told us that Lulworth and its cove are worth seeing and we are soon away over the moorland road. A strenuous ten miles it is, rough, stony, steep, with numerous gates to open and close between the fields, and in places the road is so overgrown with grass and heather as to be hardly discernible. But from the uplands which it traverses one may see the ocean on the left and to the right a long array of rolling hills and winding valleys, all in the purple glow of full-blown heather, with here and there a lonely cottage or group of trees. We begin a long descent, following the edge of the hill toward the sea, and a sharp turn leads down a short steep grade into Lulworth.

The village some years ago had merely a few thatched cottages nestling beneath the high hills to the landward, but of late Lulworth has assumed airs as a trippers’ resort in the summertime, and the red-tiled villas rather spoil its old-world effect. Lulworth would be of no more note than other villages scattered along the south coast were it not for its peculiar cove, an almost circular, basinlike depression a few hundred yards in diameter; the sea enters it through a narrow opening in the cliffs. We were able to take the car down to the very margin of the water. An angular, red-whiskered fisherman approached us and in broad South Country speech offered to row us across the cove. We acquiesced in deference to his story of slack times and hard luck. The water of the cove has a depth of sixty feet near the center and in old days offered shelter to smugglers’ smacks. From the high cliffs on the opposite side we had a magnificent view of the rough coast line, a medley of gray, green and white, stretching along the foam-flecked sea.

We soon regain the main road and pass Lulworth Castle but a little way from the village—a massive, rectangular structure with circular, crenelated towers at each corner. It is not of great antiquity, having been built during the reign of Elizabeth, who is reputed to have visited it, and King James came here to escape the plague in London.

Our route carries us back to Wareham, a sleepy, shrunken town with little to suggest its strenuous history. Indeed, one writer declares that no town in England has undergone more calamities in the shape of sieges and conflagrations from the early wars with the Danes down to the capture of the place by Cromwell’s forces. It is pleasantly situated on a strip of meadowland between two small rivers, and today has about two thousand people. Its wall, built more than a thousand years ago, may still be traced throughout its entire course and proves Wareham once of much greater extent than at present.

Wimborne Minster takes its name from the church whose square towers with odd minaretlike pinnacles loom over the town as we approach it from the south. And rightly should the name of the minster predominate, for it is the redeeming feature of the commonplace Dorset town. But it is quite enough—few English churches have a greater store of curious relics. The chained library of about two hundred and fifty huge volumes, each held to its shelf by a heavy, rusty chain, is unique; but as one reads the ponderous titles of the books he wonders that such precaution should have been deemed necessary. Still, there were no “six best sellers” in the day when this library was established, and even heavy theological treatises in Latin and Greek may have been in demand.

Not less curious is the orrery clock, five hundred years old, which illustrates the astronomical ideas of its time in compelling the sun to make a circuit of the dial every day, while the moon occupies a month. The sense of humor that mixes itself with the solemnity of so many English churches finds expression here in an odd, gnomelike automaton on the western tower that goes through strange contortions every quarter hour. One cannot but wonder just what is in the huge chest—unopened for centuries—hewn from a single log and fastened with great bunglesome locks; but most likely it contains records and documents pertaining to the church. But all these marvels are nothing to those which Wimborne Minster once possessed but which have disappeared; a piece of the true cross and one of the manger in which the Lord was born; some of the earth from the Bethlehem stable and a few hairs from Christ’s head; a thigh bone of St. Agatha; a few of St. Philip’s teeth; a joint of St. Cecelia; the hair shirt of St. Thomas a’ Becket and a small phial of his blood. Verily Wimborne Minster was well supplied with the stock in trade of the early church.

But the minster has associations of a less mythical nature. In the chancel is the grave of Aethelred, King of the West Saxons, brother of Alfred the Great, who was slain in 871. A fine brass is set in the slab over the grave, but this is doubtless of more recent date. There are tombs of several crusaders, though the effigies have been sadly mutilated. But the most curious tomb is a gilded coffin set in a niche in the wall, a little below the level of the floor. On the coffin is the date 1693, which the occupant at one time fixed as the date for his demise, but this did not occur until ten years later. He expressed a wish to be buried “neither under the ground nor above it; neither in the church nor out of it” and left an annuity of five pounds to keep his coffin touched up yearly—all of which was faithfully carried out, for thus did the church once lend itself to clownish eccentricity.

Wimborne Minster delights in its relics, its traditions, and its medieval customs. The verger told us of one of the latter that is perhaps founded on more of common sense than many of the old-time practices, and which, with that continuity of custom that confronts one everywhere in England, still prevails. The vestrymen pass through the church at times during the services and prod the sleeping brethren with long black rods—not a bad idea, after all, though one that could hardly be inaugurated without precedent.

So much of our glimpse of Wimborne Minster; it is late and we are bound for Southampton, forty or more miles away as we propose to go. The road to Ringwood and from thence to Lymington leads through an open, heathlike country—stretches of rank-growing ferns interspersed with the vivid purple of the heather. A little beyond Ringwood we enter New Forest, though in this section little of the forest—as one thinks of the word now—is to be seen. There are occasional groups of trees, but the prevailing feature of the landscape is the fern-clad heath. A cheerless road it is, but open, finely surfaced and nearly level, with nothing to hinder the mad rush of our motor.

At Lymington we hail a citizen and inquire in our best French accent for the road to Beaulieu. He studies awhile and shakes his head. Then we seek a never-failing source of information—a garage man—but to our astonishment he is puzzled.

“Boloo, Boloo; never heard of it.”

“What, the old abbey? It can’t be far from here.”

“O, you mean Bewley, to be sure—eight miles straight away; you can’t miss it.”

We hasten on over the moors and through a stretch of woodland into a wooded valley, where we come to a village more pleasing than any we have yet seen in Dorset—a village of thatched cottages and flower gardens fitting well into the charming surroundings. The river, held in leash by a weir, lies in broad, silvery reaches, fringed with willows, and groups of pond lilies dot its surface. Beaulieu, aside from its abbey, might be a shrine for the motorist, for here is the estate of Lord Montague, an enthusiast for the wind-shod steed, who has exchanged his ancestral stables for motors, and, to cap it all, is owner and editor of “The Car.”

There is not much left of the abbey. Henry VIII., with characteristic thrift, floated the stone down the river to build Hurst Castle. The refectory, now restored and used as a parish church, is the most perfect remnant of the once magnificent establishment, whose church almost equalled the huge dimensions of Winchester Cathedral. The late lord did much to restore the ruins, which are now surrounded by lawns and shrubbery. The monks of Beaulieu had wide fame for good cheer—they kept great vineyards and their wines were counted the best in England. The vineyards throve long after the Dissolution, but the last vine, several hundred years old, disappeared about two centuries ago. Just across the river there is a substantial, comfortable hotel belonging to Lord Montague, which is much frequented by fishermen.

Here we are on the sunniest, calmest of summer days in the isle whose greatest charm for us is, perhaps, in the fact that Tennyson spent most of his active life here and did much of his best work in his island home. But this is far from the only attraction of the romantic island, so small that a circuit of sixty-five miles takes one over the coast roads. The eastern and half the northern coast is dotted with increasingly popular resort towns, of which Cowes, of yachting fame, is the best known, and thither we direct our course.

It is open day at Osborne House and the short excursion by steamer from Southampton appeals to English people as few other holiday trips. And it is not strange when one reflects that no other place was in such a strict sense the home of Queen Victoria as Osborne House, or has so many memories of her life. The rather ineffective Italian villa was designed and built by herself and the Prince Consort and here were passed the happy years of the early married life of the royal couple. It was the queen’s private property and descended to King Edward, who presented it to the nation. As it stands now, it may be said to be a memorial to the queen. Here are the family portraits and the marvelous presents given to Victoria on the occasions of her golden and diamond jubilees; some were from other rulers, but the most wonderful came from Indian potentates and the colonies. These defy all description. The queen died here in 1901, and altogether Osborne House is full of the deepest significance to the average British subject. The crowds that thronged the palace grounds on the day of our visit, we were told, were quite representative of the open days of the summer season.

Newport, the capital and metropolis of the island, is a modern-looking town, whose greatest interest is Carisbrooke Castle, the stronghold of the ancient governors. It stands on an eminence overlooking the town and charming indeed was the prospect that greeted us from the walls on that shimmering summer afternoon. The town, with its red-brick, slate-roofed buildings, lay just below us; about it were the tiny fields, with the green meadowlands, the ripening grain, great trees and snug cottages. One may walk on the battlements—in part modern replacements—entirely around the castle walls, and thus view the ruin from every angle.

Carisbrooke’s chief memory is of Charles I., who came here as a guest only to be detained as a prisoner. The room he occupied has disappeared, but the window in its outer wall, through which he twice essayed to escape, may yet be seen. It was during his captivity here that he first lost hope; his hair turned gray and his trim, jaunty cavalier air forsook him. Finally, on the last night of November, 1648, he was seized by two companies of Roundhead horse and carried to Yarmouth and from thence to Windsor Castle. This was the beginning of the end. After the King’s execution, the Princess Elizabeth and the young duke of Gloucester were sent here by order of Parliament. The princess soon died and is buried in Newport Church, where a marble effigy marks the tomb. Aside from the melancholy history of King Charles, the annals of Carisbrooke have few events of importance. Its decay and resulting ruin were due to ages of neglect.

Beginning at Ryde, four miles north of Newport, we followed the coast, passing a succession of resort towns. Ryde is situated on a hillside sloping toward the sea, and its water front with drives and gardens, is one of the most charming we know of. The road from Ryde to Ventnor is crooked, narrow, and highly dangerous in places. At times it runs through closely bordering forests; again along the edge of an almost precipitous incline; then it climbs a long, terribly steep hill, but is never more than a few hundred yards from the coast.

The Royal Hotel at Ventnor comes up to its pretensions but poorly. We were surprised to find the last three parties registered in the visitors’ book coming from France, Germany and Sweden respectively, while our own added a fourth foreign registry in succession. The number of foreign guests at this hotel seemed to indicate that Ventnor is more popular with continental people than the average English resort town, for as a rule we found very few European guests. Ventnor is situated on a precipitous hill-slope, quite sheltered from the north and east. The houses run up the hill in terraces and the ledge of rock along the beach is barely wide enough for the promenade. The climate is mild and few spots in England are more favored by invalids. It was this that brought poor John Keats in 1817, and he composed “Lamia” during his stay. Here was a favorite resort of Tennyson before he settled in Freshwater, and Longfellow’s visit in 1868 is commemorated by an inscription which he composed for the fountain near the hotel in Shanklin, the old town nearly contiguous to Ventnor. Shanklin contains many bits of the picturesque old-time island—touches of antiquity quite wanting in Ventnor.

The following day was one to be remembered; a day as near perfection as one may have in England—the sky pale blue, cloudless and serene, toning to lucent gray near the horizon, and the air fresh and invigorating. Our road closely followed the coast with an almost continual view of the sea. The ocean lay darkly under the rocks, rippled over stretches of silvery beach, or glittered under the long headlands, whose white chalk cliffs were almost dazzling in the sunlight. There were flower-embowered cottages along the road, but no villages for many miles. We gave two hours to the twenty miles to Freshwater and enjoyed the beauty to our hearts’ content—but no! to do that one must linger until darkness shuts out the view.

Freshwater became famous through its association with Tennyson, and the poet by coming here destroyed to a certain extent the very retirement and quiet that he sought, for the tourists followed him, much to his disgust. Yet he used to go about in a great slouching hat and military cloak that advertised his presence to everyone—an inconsistency that even his little grandchild is said to have noticed, and that she queried in her childish innocence, “If you don’t like people to look at you, Grandpa, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?” But in any event, the trippers, though often snubbed for their pains, flocked to Freshwater. They still come to the old home of the poet, and the present Lord Tennyson is said to welcome them even less than did his father.

We stopped at a post card shop just opposite the rear entrance to Farringford—a rustic gate opening into a narrow roadway between tall trees—and they told us that the ban on visitors was absolute. But one might see the house from the road. The unprecedented snow of the preceding winter had almost destroyed the tree so beloved of the poet—the

which hid the front of the house. Besides, the owner was now at Aldworth and the gardener might not be so averse to visitors—but we ignore the hint and content ourselves with a visit to Freshwater Church. Lady Tennyson is buried in the churchyard, her grave marked by a white marble cross. Inside there are tablets inscribed to the poet and his wife, who were regular attendants at the church, and a marble statue to the memory of Lionel, the son who died on shipboard in the Red Sea when returning from India. The village of Freshwater is full of picturesque cottages, and there are many more pretentious modern villas which indicate that the blight of a popular watering place threatens it. High on the hill, over the town and sea, towers the Tennyson memorial, a great Celtic cross, forty feet in height, reared by the poet’s admirers in England and America.

“Even a poor judge of such things can see at a glance that this is no ordinary piece of work. It is said that the unfinished statue was intended to represent Louis XIV. and was being conveyed by the sculptor in a French ship to Paris in order that the artist might model the head from the living subject. Holmes captured the vessel and conceived the brilliant idea of compelling the artist to complete the work with his (the admiral’s) likeness instead of that of le Grand Monarque. The old fellow seems to wear a grim smile as he thinks of the joke, but as the head is undoubtedly of inferior workmanship to the body, the artist may have felt that he had his revenge.”

The admiral was a native of Yarmouth and a part of his mansion is incorporated into the Pier Hotel. It still retains the old staircase and much antique paneling; and a tablet on the wall recites that Charles II. was a guest here in 1671 on a visit to Holmes.

We were soon aboard the little steamer, and despite marine rules and regulations, on the bridge with our friend the captain. We noticed that he was going far out of the usual course, directly toward the wreck of the Gladiator. For the warship Gladiator lay on her side a few furlongs off the coast west of Yarmouth, whither she had staggered and fallen when mortally wounded in a collision with the American liner, St. Paul, a few months before. Salvage crews were working to raise her and we naturally expressed interest in the sight. Our ancient mariner heard it and as he steered toward the wreck muttered something about getting “out of the way of the current,” but added, “They may think I did it to give you a good view of the Gladiator!”—and we are still wondering if that was the reason for his detour. Far down the Solent he pointed out the Needles, Swinburne’s “loose-linked rivets of rock,” and he told us of the wild storms and shifting bars that confound the navigators in this locality. Ere long he had to attend closely to business, for the channel to Lymington is narrow and tortuous, being navigable only at high tide. A large coaling steamer partly obstructed our way and called forth a series of marine objurgations from our friend, but he quickly swung to the pier and the motor soon scrambled out of her little craft up the steep bank to terra firma.

We find that our jaunt in the Isle of Wight has covered only seventy miles and occupied just a day; still, thanks to our trusty car, we have seen about all the points of interest that the average tourist would care to see and which it would have required several days to visit in the ordinary manner of travel.

XVII
SOUTH ENGLAND NOOKS

One will find Lyndhurst in New Forest a pleasant place for a day’s rest after returning from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. Especially is this so if it be early in the summer before the more crowded season comes on. The town will be fairly quiet then and the Crown Inn has an air of solid comfort that almost takes it out of the class of resort hotels. Its spacious gardens to the rear afford a sylvan retreat that is an agreeable variation from an almost continual life on the open road. Lyndhurst, it is true, is no longer the retired village of half a century ago, when Leighton and Millais came here to get away from busy London and to pursue their sketching without interruption. The rather ugly red brick church just over the way from the Crown evidences Lyndhurst’s modernity, though its distressing newness may be momentarily forgotten in contemplation of Leighton’s great altar piece, illustrating the story of the ten virgins.

One may care little about William Rufus, who was so fond of hunting in New Forest and who, while engaged in his favorite pastime, was killed by a forester’s arrow; yet a pilgrimage to the spot where he is said to have fallen is worth while—not merely to see the iron casting which encases the old stone, but to view one of the prettiest glades in the forest. We came early in the day, which is the time to come to avoid the crowds of trippers who flock here in season, and we had undivided possession of the scene of sylvan beauty. A shaded byway leads to the main road, which soon brings us to Romsey.

There is little to detain the wayfarer in Romsey aside from the abbey church, whose high roof reaches almost to the top of its central tower—in fact, the noble bulk of the church rises over the town, completely dwarfing the low buildings that crowd closely around it. One can but admire its great size and perfect proportions, and though there may be incongruous details, these will hardly be noticed by the layman.

The interior is almost pure Norman—massive pillars supporting the great rounded arches. The height and size of the columns give the church an impressiveness that is hardly surpassed by any other in the Kingdom, and after Durham, it easily ranks as the finest example of Norman architecture extant. It dates mainly from the twelfth century, and a Saxon church previously occupied the site, slight remains of this being incorporated into the present building. The most remarkable Saxon relic is a life-size image of Christ upon the cross, of a type not found later than the eleventh century.

There is often a gruesome side to the old English church—a bit of human skin flayed from a living church robber is shown at Gloucester, frightful effigies representing decayed corpses at Canterbury and Sherborne, and at Romsey a broad plait of human hair, found in recent restoration work. It was in a leaden casket and even the bones had mouldered to dust, but the soft brown hair was almost unaltered, and it is thought to have adorned the head of some Roman maiden, for the casket showed traces of Roman work. The old caretaker has reserved this weird little relic for the last of his wonders—we leave the abbey and pass out into the sunshine of the perfect summer day. We shall not soon forget Romsey Abbey Church and we cast more than one backward glance as its giant bulk recedes in the distance.