beautiful-but what we call the English elm, with its upright, stiff stem. As we straggled on down a green lane, we saw a notice "To let furnished" on the gate of a very attractive-looking cottage; so, being seized with a happy inspiration (a natural one, you may think it, for pushing Yankees), we determined, as applicants for the tenement, to see the inside of an English cottage; so, going up a narrow paved walk, we rung for admittance. I asked a pretty, neatly-dressed woman who appeared to show me the premises, and kept my countenance in spite of my tittering followers, while we were shown through a dining-room, drawingroom, two kitchens, and five bedrooms, all small, and furnished with extreme neatness and comfort. this, with a very pretty little garden, we might have, without linen or plate, for four guineas a week. There was a lovely little court, too, in front, filled with shrubs and flowers; not a thimbleful of earth that did not do its duty. No wonder the woman took us at our word, for I am sure we looked as if we would fain set up our rest there. All I afterward followed R. into the garden, and encountered the deaf husband of our neat matron-guide. He showed me a filbert grafted upon an apple-tree by a bird having deposited a seed there. I asked, "Had the filbert borne fruit?" "Four guineas a⚫ week, ma'am," he answered, "and it's counted a. very 'ealthy hair!" We felt it was quite time to retreat. Rather! p Kp When we came home we found that Captain Hall, Mrs. H., and some of their friends had left cards for us. "Very prompt," we thought; "and so this matter is done." We ate with Dalgetty appetites our first English dinner soup, salmon, mutton-chops, and everything the best of its kind, and served as in a private gentleman's house, and, alas! with an elegance and accuracy found in few gentlemen's houses in our country. We have plenty of gentlemen, but gentlemen's servants are with us rare birds. June 5. We feel green and bewildered, as you may imagine; and not knowing how to arrange our tour around the Isle of Wight, we were discussing it in some perplexity when Captain Hall and Mrs. H. were announced. They were just going off on a visit to the son of Wilberforce who is rector at Brixton; but Captain H. deciding at once that we must give the day to the Portsmouth lions, and that he would show them to us, deferred his departure till the evening; and the half hour before we set off was occupied in receiving a visit from Captain H.'s children and instructions from a friend of Mrs. Hall, well acquainted with the localities, as to our progress around the island. Captain H. left us no time for dawdling. He has been a lionhunter, and understands the art of lion-showing, and, what I think rather the nicest part of the art, what not to show. Off we set towards the sallyport. On the way we dropped into a Gothic church (a pretty episode enough) of the twelfth century." Captain H. pointed out a monument to Bucking ham, Charles the First's favourite who, as you may remember, was killed by Felton at Portsmouth. 66 We were to go first to the Victory, which is now kept here, a kind of toy," as one of our seamen of the St. James said, but which, in fact, is something more than that-a receiving and drilling ship. We found a boat awaiting us, put (of course by Captain Hall's intervention) at our disposal by the commander of the Victory. It was manned with a dozen youngsters in the Victory's uniform, a white knit woollen blouse, with the word Victory in Maria-Louise-blue on the breast. They were stout, ruddy lads. The Victory, you know, is the ship in which Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar, and died in winning it. Captain H. led us to the quarter-deck, and showed us a brass plate inserted in the floor, inscribed with these words, "Here Nelson fell!" This was a thrilling sight to those of us who remembered when Nelson was held as the type of all gallantry, fighting for liberty against the world. R. was obliged to turn away till he could command his emotions, and I thought of the time when we were all children together at home, and I saw him running breathless up the lane, tossing his hat into the air and shouting, "Nelson! Victory!" Truly, "the Ichild is father to the man." We were received very courteously by the commander, Captain S., who invited us into an apartment which, save the ceiling was a little lower, had the aspect of a shore drawing-room; there were sofas, show-books, flowers, piano, and a prettier garniture than these, a r young bride, reminding us, with her pale, delicate face and French millinery, of our fair young countrywomen-quite un-English. The Victory is Captain S.'s home, and the lady was his daughter. We then went into the cockpit and groped our way to the dark, narrow state-room (a midshipman's) where Nelson was carried after he was shot down. Captain H. pointed to the beam where his head lay when he died. There a heroic spirit had passed away, and left a halo in this dark, dismal place. Place and circumstance are never less important to a man than when he is dying, and yet it was a striking contrast (and the world is full of such), the man dying in this wretched, dark, stifling hole, when his name was resounding through all the palaces of Europe, and making our young hearts leap in the New World. Shall I tell you what remembrance touched me most as I stood there? not his gallant deeds, for they are written in blood, and many a vulgar spirit has achieved such; but the exquisite tenderness gleaming forth in his last words, "Kiss me, Hardy!" These touched the chord of universal humanity. Our next step was from the poetic-romantic to the actual, from the Victory to the biscuit-bakery, a place where biscuits are made for naval stores by steam. A police-man started out upon us "like a spider,” as Captain H. very descriptively said, and announced that all ingress to the art and mystery of steam-baking was forbidden to foreigners; and we were turning away acquiescingly, for the most curious of our ગી party had two or three years ago seen the process Well, the bakery being taboo, our conductor pro- ་་ |