for beauty than sublimity, and hence the very appropriate designation of
"THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND!" an emphatic compliment cheerfully paid by the
thousands annually visiting its shores for pleasure or for health: and
perhaps there is scarcely another spot in the kingdom, of the same
narrow limits, which can concentrate more of those qualities that at
once charm the eye and animate the soul. Nor should it be overlooked how
large a source of interest is derived from the proximity of those two
celebrated towns, Southampton and Portsmouth: and the beautiful
termination given to most of the open prospects by the retiring
distances on the opposite coast.

----"Intermixture sweet,
Of lawns and groves, of open and retired,
Vales, farms, towns, villas, castles, distant spires.
And hills on hills with ambient clouds enrolled,
In long succession court the lab'ring sight."

But the crowning beauty of the Island is certainly THE SEA! viewed in
all the splendor of its various aspects;--whether under the awful
grandeur of the agitated and boundless _Ocean_,--as a rapid and
magnificent _River_,--or reposing in all the glassy tranquillity of a
spacious land-locked _Bay_:--now of a glowing crimson, and now of the
purest depth of azure: its bosom ever spangled with a thousand moving
and attractive objects of marine life.

To those who have never had the opportunity of viewing the sea except
under the comparatively dreary aspect which it presents from many
unsheltering parts of the southern coast, as for instance Brighton,
where almost the only relief to the monotony of the wide expanse is a
few clumsy fishing boats or dusky colliers, and occasionally the rolling