328 AX AMERICAN FARMER IX EXGLAXD. 



district is thickly inhabited, and yet so well covered with verdure, 

 or often so tastefully appropriate quiet, cosy, ungenteel, yet 

 elegant are the cottages, that they often add to, rather than in- 

 sult and destroy, the natural charm of their neighborhood. I 

 ain sorry to say, that among the later erections there are a num- 

 ber of strong exceptions to this remark. 



In this paradise the climate, by favor of its shelter of hills on 

 the north, and the equalizing influence of the ocean on the south, 

 is, perhaps, the most equable and genial in the northern tem- 

 perate zone. The mercury does not fall as low in winter as at 

 Rome ; deciduous trees lose their verdure but for a brief inter- 

 val ; greensward is evergreen ; tender-roses, fuschias. and the 

 dark, glossy shrubs of Canaan and of Florida, feel themselves at 

 home, and flourish through the winter. 



Where the chalky downs reach the shore without an inter- 

 vening barrier of rock, or a gradual sloping descent, they are 

 broken off abruptly and precipitously ; and thus are formed the 

 "white cliffs of Albion," and a coast scenery with which, for 

 grandeur, there is nothing on our Atlantic shore that will in the 

 least compare : notwithstanding which, and although they really 

 are often higher than our church-steeples and monuments the 

 familiar standards with which we compare their number of feet 

 they have not the stupendous effect upon the mind that I had 

 always imagined that they must have. 



We were rambling for the greater part of two days upon the 

 island, spending a night near Black-Gang-Chine. Returning, 

 we passed near Osborne, a private estate purchased some years 

 since by the Queen, upon which she has had erected a villa, said 

 to be an adaptation of the Grecian style to modern tastes and 

 habits, but of which nothing is to be seen from without the 

 grounds but the top of a lofty campanile, from which is now dis- 

 played the banner with the royal arms, which always indicates 



