Old Ballad of Alison Cross.

Dr. Woodford's parish was Portchester, where stood the fine old
royal castle at present ungarrisoned, and partly dismantled in the
recent troubles, on a chalk peninsula, a spur from Portsdown,
projecting above the alluvial flats, and even into the harbour,
whose waves at high tide laved the walls. The church and churchyard
were within the ample circuit of the fortifications, about two
furlongs distant from the main building, where rose the mighty
Norman keep, above the inner court, with a gate tower at this date,
only inhabited by an old soldier as porter with his family. A
massive square tower at each angle of the huge wall likewise defied
decay.

It was on Midsummer eve, that nearly about sundown, Dr. Woodford was
summoned by the severe illness of the gatekeeper's old father, and
his sister-in-law went with him to attempt what her skill could
accomplish for the old man's relief.

They were detained there till the sun had long set, though the air,
saturated with his redness, was full of soft twilight, while the
moon, scarcely past the full, was just high enough to silver the
quiet sea, and throw the shadow of the battlements and towers on the
sward whitened with dew.

After the close atmosphere of the sickroom the freshness was
welcome, and Mrs. Woodford, once a friend of Katherine Phillips,
'the Matchless Orinda,' had an eye and a soul to appreciate the
beauty, and she even murmured the lines of Il Penseroso as she leant
on the arm of her brother-in-law, who, in his turn, thought of