MR DOWNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



shrubs, newly planted. The whole place has, most completely, the look of the pret 

 tious place of some of our wealthy men at home, who, turning their backs upon the num- 

 berless fine natural sites, with which our country abounds, choose the barest and bald- 

 est situation, in order that they may dig, delve, level and grade, and spend half their for- 

 tunes, in doing what nature has, not a mile distant, offered to them ready made, and a 

 thousand times more beautifully done. Osborne House may be a toleraVjle residence, (we 

 mean respecting its out of-doors-pleasure,) fifty years hence; but it is almost the only 

 country seat that we saw in England, that looked thoroughly raw and uncomfortable. I 

 suppose, in a country where everything seems finished, there is a singular pleasure in tak- 

 ing a place in the rough, and working beauties out of tameness and insipidity. The 

 Queen lives here, and walks and drives about the neighborhood, in a comparatively sim- 

 ple and unostentatious manner, and attracts very little attention, and her husband prac- 

 tices farming and planting, quite in good earnest. 



A country seat, only a mile distant, in a thoroughly English taste, was a complete con- 

 trast to the foregoing, and gave us great pleasure. This is Norris Castle, built by Lord 

 Seymour, but now the property of Mr. Bell, who resides here. Neither the place, nor 

 the house, is larger than several on the Hudson, and the grounds reminded me, in the 

 bimple lawn or park, sprinkled with fine groups of trees, of Livingston INIanor and EUers- 

 lie. The house gave me greater pleasure, than any modern castellated building that I 

 have seen; partly because it was simple, and essentially domestic-looking, and yet, with 

 a fine relish of antiquit}^ about it. The facade may, perhaps, be 130 feet, and I was never 

 more surprised, than when I learned that the whole was erected quite lately. The walls 

 arc of gray stone, rather rough, and they get a large part of their beauty from the luxuri- 

 ant vines that festoon every part of the castle. The vines are the Ivy, and our Virginia 

 creeper, intermingled, and as both cling to the stone, they form the most picturesque dra- 

 pery, which has, in a few years, reached to the top of the battlemented tower, and given 

 a mellow and venerable character, to the whole edifice. 



We dined at Newport, the substantial little town, which, lying nearly in the center of 

 the Island, serves as its capital and principal market. The Isle of Wight, enjoying, as 

 it does, a wholly insulated position, is almost the only English ground not interlaced by 

 rail-roads. For this reason, the genuine stage coach, now comparatively obsolete else- 

 Avhere, still flourishes here, and still carries a number of passengers out-side, quite at va- 

 riance with all our ideas of safety and speed. The guard, who accompanies these coaches, 

 usually performs an obligato on the French horn or key bugle, just before the coach starts — 

 and performs it too, with so much spirit and taste, that it was not without some difficulty I 

 could resist the temptation to join his party. Progress, and the spirit of the times, 

 though they give us most substantial benefits, in the shape of rail-roads, etc, certainly do 

 not add to the poetry of life — as I thought when I compared the delicious air of Bellixi, 

 played by the coach guard, with the horrible screams of the steam-whistle of the locomo- 

 tive — now associated with the travel of all Christendom. 



It is but a mile from Newport to Carisbrook Castle — one of the most interesting old ruins 

 in England. It crowns a fine hill, and from the top of its ruined towers, you look over a 

 lovely landscape of hill and vale, picturesque villages, and green meadows. The castle, 

 itself, with its fortifications, covers perhaps, half a dozen acres, and is just in that state 

 of ruin and decay, best calculated to excite the imagination, and send one upon a voyage 

 into dream-land. You clamber over the parapets, and look out from amid the mouldering 

 battlements, mantled with the richest masses of Ivy, and see wild trees growing 

 very center of what were once stately apartments. Here is the very window from 



