speaks of the place he says:

"In this sea" (which is the Solent) "comes a double tide out of the seas
which spring from the infinite ocean of the Arctic surrounding all
Britain."

And he tells us how these double tides rush together and fight together,
sweeping as they do round either side of the island by the Needles and
by Spithead into the land-locked sheet within.

Now that passage in Bede's fourth book is more real to me than anything
in all his chronicle, for in Southampton Water to-day the living thing
which we still note as we sail is the double tide. You take a falling
tide at the head of the water, near Southampton Town, and if you are not
quick with your business it is checked in two hours and you meet a
strange flood, the second flood, before you have rounded Calshott
Castle.

Then there is a Charter of Newcastle. Or, rather, the inviolable Customs
of that town, very old, drawn up nearly eight hundred years ago, but
beginning from far earlier; and in these customs you find written:

"If a plea shall arise between a burgess and a merchant it must be
determined before the third flowing of the sea"--that is, within three
tides; a wise provision! For thus the merchant would not miss the last
tide of the day after the quarrel. How living it is, a phrase of that
sort coming in the midst of those other phrases!

All the rest, worse luck, has gone. Burgage-tenure, and the economic
independence of the humble, and the busy, healthy life of men working to