Part 13

We hurry away from the coalfields to where Carmarthen stands high on Towy bank, grandly overlooking the course of the river to the sea. Of the bay named from this ancient capital, the most beautiful part, perhaps, is where Tenby, from its rocky promontory, overlooks the sea. As we terminated our little tour in North Wales at Llandudno, so here at Tenby we bade farewell to the southern part of the Principality. But before leaving there was time for one little excursion along the coast, superb beyond all our expectation, especially for the first few miles, where the mountain limestone fronts the sea with bold, cave-pierced cliff. Our ramble terminated at Manor-beer Castle, one of the most extensive and complete of feudal fortresses in Great Britain. Perhaps there is no ruin of the kind in which the arrangements for residence as well as for defence can be so clearly traced, and certainly there are few which more nobly command the shore below.

But our brief excursion was over. Some of the most picturesque parts of South Wales were, perforce, left unvisited--especially Tintern, that loveliest of British abbeys. Yet much had been seen to quicken the sense of beauty; while the glimpse of busy industry given us along the south coast, had quickened our desire to learn something more of the great population gathered by its docks and ports, its mines and furnaces. For it is the human interest which, wherever we may travel, must gradually become supreme, and nowhere more truly than in South Wales. The heroism often manifested in the midst of lowliest toil was never more strikingly illustrated than in a recent incident which has made the name of Pontypridd a household word in England. All know the story of the imprisoned miners, and the men who bravely volunteered to rescue them, daring the peril of compressed air, inflammable gas, and the pent-up floods of water. "Four men"--let the tale never be forgotten at British firesides!--"from one o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 19th of April, 1877, until three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, worked on amid all these accumulated dangers until the rescue of their comrades was complete. Twenty-two others were only second to those four men--eleven in taking an actual share in the work of cutting through the barrier of coal, and eleven others in constant presence and superintendence. It was an intense exercise of self-devotion, patience, and deliberate courage--a concentration, as it were, of qualities which could only be acquired by the habitual exercise of these qualities in every-day life, and perhaps their cultivation through many generations." Happily they were successful, and the nation feels it to be but a worthy recognition of such heroism, that a new order of merit, instituted to do honour to gallantry in saving life on land, has been inaugurated by the gift of "the Albert Medal" to those Welsh colliers. Never has decoration been better earned! "Not the least satisfaction, however, of those who receive it ought to be, that they have been the means of drawing public attention and public honour to the whole class of brave and unselfish deeds of which they have furnished one of the most conspicuous of instances. There are no signs that the struggle of civilisation with nature will cease to demand its victims. The progress of mankind still depends, and must long depend, upon the bravery and unselfishness with which unknown perils are encountered; and, perhaps, as science opens up further fields of experiment and investigation, still bolder adventures may be demanded. It was but right that the stamp of national honour should be formally placed upon all such deeds; and the Welsh miners deserve the thanks, not merely of their comrades, but of their country, for having established in public esteem a new and permanent order of merit." *

* _The Times_, August 8, 1877.

THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

|SIR Walter Scott somewhere speaks of the Isle of Wight as a "beautiful island, which he who once sees never forgets, through whatever part of the wide world his future path may lead him." Whether this description be over-coloured or no, it is certain that there is hardly any spot of English ground so well adapted for a ramble of three or four days. There cannot be a more charming excursion than a cruise round "the Island," as inhabitants of the neighbouring counties fondly call it, when the atmosphere is clear, and light breezes stir the water, without raising it to roughness. The Solent, with its richly varied shores, and its flotilla of white-sailed yachts, is first traversed: then round the Needles we meet the open sea, gazing as we pass by at the quaint, almost grotesque, forms of those pointed chalk pillars, the evident relics of cliffs worn away by the action of the sea. Scratchell's Bay, with its chalk precipices, is passed; and other bays, with their richly coloured, variegated sands, excite new interest and wonder. Then the Chines, or ravines in the cliff, diversify the outline; and so we reach the Undercliffe, that line of coast, whose perfect protection from the winter's cold, with the fresh purity of the sea-breeze, render it almost unique as a residence for the consumptive. Niton at one extremity, and Ventnor and Bonchurch at the other, with the five miles between, offering a succession of views unsurpassed in beauty. "The beautiful places," writes Lord Jeffrey, "are either where the cliffs sink deep into bays and valleys, opening like a theatre to the sun and the sea, or where there has been a terrace of low land formed at their feet, which stretches under the shelter of that enormous wall like a rich garden plot, all roughened over with masses of rock fallen in distant ages, and overshadowed with thickets of myrtle and rose and geranium, which all grow wild here in great luxuriance and profusion."

After leaving Bonchurch, Shanklin Chine, Sandown Bay, terminated on the north by the magnificent chalk headland called Culver Cliff, or the Cliff of the White Dove, terminate the most beautiful part of this little voyage. After rounding one or two more headlands, Ryde comes into sight, and loyal travellers begin to look out for Whipping-ham church tower, and the woods and palace of Osborne; soon after passing which Cowes is reached, and the excursion is over.

The interior of the island has many points of interest, but three or four days are sufficient for their exploration. A most interesting excursion is that to Newport and Carisbrooke Castle, so closely connected with the annals of Charles I. The visitor to Blackgang Chine will probably come to the conclusion that this and similar fissures in the chalk cliffs have been extolled beyond their deserts. There are combes in Devonshire, unknown to fame, far superior to either Blackgang or Shanklin, and at the latter especially, the elaborate artificiality of the whole scene is a little repellant, while the celebrated waterfall is commonly but a trickling rill. Blackgang is finer as a chasm, but the cascade is equally insignificant. The charm of "the Island" is, after all, in the climate, the colouring, and the glorious sea.

Few walks of richer or more luxuriant beauty can be found within the same compass than that from Blackgang Chine to Ventnor. First we reach the Sandrock Spring, a chalybeate fountain in a cliff; the water, it is said, contains alum and iron in an unexampled proportion. There is a cottage, hard by, displaying a few tumblers, but customers do not seem to be many. As a spa, Sandrock is too plainly a failure; and for real invigoration to health and spirits, we would rather try the pure ozone on the summit of St. Catherine's Cliff, than imbibe any quantity of the chalybeate. Let the visitor stay long and inhale the glorious sea-breeze. He will indeed have pure air below, that is, unless the breezes, as is their wont sometimes, are stirring the chalk in dust clouds--a kind of white simoom!

But at the best, the air of the Undercliffe is soft and languid, suggestive to the robust of delicate lungs; while yet those who are thus afflicted cannot be too thankful for a shelter where the atmosphere is as mild as it is pure, and the scene at every point, by land and sea, most beautiful.

We descend from St. Catherine's down to Niton, and thence pursue our way by Puckaster and Mirables Lawrence, where the church was once accounted the smallest in England (twelve by twenty feet in the interior), but is now enlarged by the addition of a chancel.

"Improvement" has been direfully at work since first we visited this little village and drank of the cool waters of "St. Lawrence's Well." The white, well-kept road is more level than the old picturesque path; instead of ivied cottages there are now shining villas with green blinds, walls for hedgerows, and, worst of all, the gushing spring flows somewhere in an inclosure to which there seems no access. It is a pity to have thus modernised so rustic and lovely a spot. But the flowers are still there, perfuming the air; and the myrtles and the fuchsias are not shrubs, but trees, and the luxuriance of southern climes surrounds us. As we walk along we speculate on the convulsions of nature that have prepared for us this little paradise. The undulating ground at our feet is evidently formed of vast masses of chalk and clay, which, at former periods, have broken bodily from the face of the cliff, slipped forward, and sunk down. The surface, disintegrated by aqueous and atmospheric action, has formed a kind of irregular terrace, the soil of which is most favourable to vegetation. The ground is now firm, the process of disintegration from above seems almost arrested; but there are even yet memories of landslips on a large scale, of which the traces are still visible.

There is one walk in the island which no tolerable pedestrian should omit--that from Newport to Freshwater, or Alum Bay. Leaving the main road at Carisbrooke, a footpath leads upwards through fields richly cultivated and gay with wild flowers. The open down which forms the backbone of the island is soon reached. Keeping along the ridge the tourist will for some miles enjoy a scene almost unique in its beauty. The soft delicate curves and undulations which characterise the chalk downs, and which the unobservant traveller so often overlooks, may be seen in perfection. Nestling in many a sheltered nook are farm-houses, hamlets, and churches, embosomed in trees. Patches of fern, gorse, and heather diversify the landscape. And far below, on either side, is the sea--on the right hand the Solent, on the left the English Channel. After a while Freshwater comes into view, with its | line of cliffs rising sheer from the waves, and about half-a-mile inland the sheltered nook which has been made a classic spot as the home of the Poet Laureate. His description of it will be familiar to many readers.

"Where, far from smoke and noise of town, I watch the twilight falling brown All round a careless ordered garden. Close to the ridge of a noble down. You'll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine, And only hear the magpie gossip Garrulous under a roof of pine. For groves of pine on either hand, To break the blast of winter, stand; And further on, the hoary Channel Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand."

A couple of miles more and we reach Alum Bay and the Needles, spoken of on a preceding page.

Half a century ago few contributions to our religious literature were more widely and deservedly popular than Legh Richmond's "short and simple annals of the poor." Though of late years they have lost something of their popularity, yet many visitors to the island make a pilgrimage to Brading, with which the name of the devout author is inseparably connected. The grave of little Jane, the Young Cottager, is in the churchyard here: that of the "Dairyman's Daughter," Elizabeth Vallbridge, is at Arreton, three or four miles away towards the interior.

Here for the present our rambles must end.

It is impossible to retrace them without feeling how very beautiful England is. Some of her beauties are little known. Others are not appreciated as they deserve. Many an obscure and unvisited nook has a loveliness or a grandeur or a picturesqueness beyond that of the most famous show-places. But the glory of our island is that so many of its loveliest spots are associated with the memory of great names and noble deeds. The glory of England is in its people; but its people may well, in turn, exult and give thanks to God that He has given them so fair and splendid a home.

End of Project Gutenberg's English Pictures, by Samuel Manning and S. G. Green