can but hope that some day, in the new England that we are told is on
the way, a great transformation will take place on the shores of
Itchen and Test.

The excursion that every visitor should take is down the Water to
Cowes. Few steamer trips in the south are as pleasant and interesting.
In consequence of the double tides with which Southampton is favoured,
the chance of having a long stretch of ill looking and worse smelling
mud flats in the foreground of the view is almost negligible. Unless a
very thorough knowledge of the shore is desired, the view from the
deck will give the stranger an adequate idea of the surrounding
country. The passing show of shipping, of all sorts, sizes and
nationalities, is not the least interesting item of the passage. The
writer's most vivid recollection of Southampton Water in the early
summer of 1918 is not of the beautiful shores shimmering in the June
sun, but of an extraordinary line of "dazzle ships" in the centre of
the waterway, moored bow to stern in a long perspective, or it would
be more correct to say, want of perspective, the brain and the eye
being so much at variance that the ends of the line could scarcely be
believed to consist of ships at all.

[Illustration: NETLEY RUINS.]

The ruins of Netley Abbey can best be seen by taking the pleasant
shore road from Woolston and Weston Grove. The distance is a little
over two miles from the Itchen ferry. The so-called Netley Castle was
once the gate-house of the Abbey, converted into a fort when Henry
VIII devised the elaborate scheme of coast defence that has dotted the
southern seaboard with a more scattered (and more picturesque) series
of Martello towers.