344 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[^November, 



luid fo take such ctlucalion as they could 

 get. The Lankasterian school wa3 the only 

 chance for me. It did not take long to go 

 through the course in those days, and at twelve 

 years old I was a "monitor " over a dozen boys, 

 on a salary of one penny a week, and the privi- 

 lege of attending on some extra branches of edu- 

 cation on Saturday morning, which the zealous 

 master voluntarily gave us besides the duties he 

 was engaged to perform. I can hardly express 

 the feelings with which I stood on the only spot 

 in all this great town I recognized, and where 

 forty years before I was the centre of a half 

 circle with a dozen boys toeing the chalk-line 

 around me. One by one I endeavored to recall 

 their faces, but it was a hard task. I wandered 

 into the little " dissenting" chapel near by and 

 which had started that school, hut it was not the 

 church I knew. Nothing was left of its former 

 simplicity. " Where " I asked the sexton, brush- 

 ing up for the morrow's Sunday service, " is the 

 old minister Guyer?" "Dead. Wc were not 

 allowed to bury a Calvinist in the church -yard 

 of the town, so we put him in there in front of 

 the pulpit." "And where " I asked " is Mr. Par- 

 rish who taught in that school ? " " He went as 

 missionary to Burmah, and took the fever and 

 died there." It was the same story all the while- 

 Ryde was indeed an American town to me. It 

 is ever on the improve, and it drives out the past 

 even worse I think than we do. It has im- 

 proved itself to death. When it built a pier, 

 and established a steamboat line to the main- 

 land seven miles away, it was a lovely rural 

 spot for the tired Londoner to approach and en- 

 joy for a few days. But it has been " esplanaded " 

 and walled in all round about in various wa3's 

 until there is little left to enjoy but a sight of 

 the sea from your bed-room window, so that 

 now when the visitor comes he mounts the cars 

 at once, and goes for the back of the island, or 

 some place. Our prosperous towns may take a 

 lesson from this : Improve and beautify — but lose 

 not sight of natural advantages. 



Was there to be nothmg but this little school 

 and its dream of the past left of the old long 

 ago? We took the cars to wander about the 

 island which was once known as the garden of 

 England, in hopes to find something of the olden 

 time. The hedge-fences purple with the glowing 

 foxglove, and the hundreds of mollusks with 

 their beautifully colored shells which abound 

 among the vegetation of this favored clime ; the 

 red tiled or straw thatched houses seemed about 



as they once looked ; hut it was not until wo 

 came on the ivy-covered ruins of Cariabrooke 

 Castle, we felt entirely at home. There is a well 

 here near three hundred feet deep, sunk they 

 say in the time of King Stephen, to keep the be- 

 sieged in drink, and the waters of which are 

 drawn by a donkey, which stands, or rather 

 walks in the inside of an immense wheel. The 

 donkey of our time had passed away ; his suc- 

 cessor st.od in the green " parade ground " in- 

 side the CiV-stle, listless to all around, and waiting 

 for his time to come; and the third generation 

 was now at the wheel. But the crumbling old 

 battlements were still about the same. We 

 walked still over the parapets from whence the 

 famous bow-and-arrow men picked off their 

 enemies. We looked through the rooms where 

 the prisoner King Charles was confined, and the 

 chamber where the Princess Elizabeth died ; and 

 the ivy still clung lovingly around the bars of 

 the window through which the King escaped, 

 once more to be restored to his royal seat. These 

 venei'able ruins may probably be 



" The Ivy's food at last," 



but the famous old plant is a long time over its 

 meal. Huge trees grow out of the ruins, 

 and .you walk in and out of what were once 

 upper chambers, with branches of trees them- 

 selves perhaps a century old at j'our very feet. 

 Dust has blown into crevices on the heights of 

 the walls, and the moss has grown and died in it, 

 and made soil ; and in this again the birds have 

 built their nests, bringing seeds of plants in the 

 materia], till the whole of these old walls have 

 become a botanic garden — wall-flowers, Canter- 

 bury bells, stone-cups and wild thyme. One 

 could soon fill a good sized herbarium from this 

 little world which has been wholly created since 

 the hand of man put this vast pile of mortar 

 and stone together here. But how long it was 

 since this was done no one knows. 



Right in the valley, at the foot of the hill, has 

 recently been dug out from beneath the surface 

 the remains of a cottage of immense size. It is 

 only the floors and partition walls at the base, 

 but it must have been an elaborate aff"air. The 

 floors are made of half-inch squares of stone or 

 tile, and worked in Mosaic style to represent as 

 many beautiful patterns as a modern carpet. 

 But what interested us most was the remains of 

 the bath-room. These baths are of thin stone, 

 rather shallow, and lined with Roman cement 

 and were warmed bj' hot-air flues which are car- 

 ried under them. It is no doubt the remains of 



