THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY > NATURALIST. 



49 



side of the turnpike road in the parish of Turgiss, Co. 

 Southampton,'' having been passed in the preceding 

 year. The scheme seems to have taken a long time 

 in hatching, preliminary steps having been taken 

 some nineteen years earlier, as will be seen by the 

 following advertisement which appeared in The 

 Salisbury Journal of October 29, 1770 : 



LONDON NAVIGATION, OR BASINGSTOKE 

 CANAL, HANTS. 



At a meeting ot many gentlemen, clergy, and freeholders 

 ot the counties of Southampton, Berks, and Wilts, held 

 in the Town-hall of Basingstoke aforesaid, the nth of 

 October, 1770, pursuant to an advertisement, for taking 

 publickly into consideration the matter of making a navig- 

 able canal from the said town of Basingstoke to that part 

 ot the river Thames, in Berks, nearest the city of London, 

 Resolved as follows : 



Resolved, that the making of a navigable canal from 

 Basingstoke aforesaid, to communicate with the river 

 Thames, at a place called Monkey Island, near Windsor, 

 will be of great public utility. 



That application be made to parliament as early as may 

 be in the next session to obtain a bill for that purpose, a 

 petition being prepared, produced, and read, was approved 

 of and signed. 



That a committee be appointed to carry into execution 

 the resolution of this meeting. 



That the first meeting of the committee be held at the 

 Town-hall, in Basingstoke, on Friday the ninth of No- 

 vember next. 



Ordered that these resolutions be published in the news 



WILLIAM BEST, Clerk to the meeting. 



THE HAMPSHIRE INDEPENDENT, March i, 1890. 



WEATHER REPORT FOR THE WEEK. 

 From the meteorological register made at the Ordnance 

 Survey Office, Southampton, under the direction of Col. Sir 

 Chas. Wilson, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S.. R.E. Lat. 50' 

 54' 59" N. ; long. i 24' o" W. ; height above sea, 84 feet. 

 Observers Sergt. T. Chambers, R.E., and Mr. J. T. Cook. 



* Black bulb in vacuo. t Rain and Snow. 



DEAN KITCHIN'S " WINCHESTER."* 



The history of Winchester by Dr. Kitchin, which 

 has just been issued as one of the series of " Historic 

 Towns '' edited by Dr. Edward A. Freeman and the 

 Rev. William Hunt, is a notable addition to our local 

 literature. Those who knew that the learned Dean 

 was engaged upon this work have looked forward to 

 it as a book of great interest, and the high expecta- 

 tions will not be falsified by its appearance. Probably 

 no town in the kingdom can vie with Winches- 

 ter in wealth of historical associations, and 

 it certainly would not have been easy for the editors 

 to have placed the task of writing its history in a con- 

 cise and popular form in more competent hands. It 

 is evident throughout that the production of this book 

 has been a labour of love ; the old city is treated of 

 with an affectionate regard that is catching 

 to the reader as well as to the writer. The 

 book is not written in a dry-as-dust archaeological 

 style, which though it has a charm for the confirmed 

 antiquary, serves only to repel the ordinary reader ; 

 there is not a single foot-note in the whole 200 and 

 odd pages, and the book is innocent of any such 

 thing as an appendix. The subject indeed is treated 

 as a living reality, and we have as it were presented 

 to us a biography of Winchester. The author does 

 not take us round the city, like most of our local 

 historians, giving separate chapters on its antiquities, 

 its municipal institutions, &c., with dry extracts from 

 ancient records and bare lists of mayors and mem- 

 bers of Parliament, but traces in a graphic manner 

 the career of the ancient capital from its very birth in 

 the dim ages of the past long before the dawn of 

 history right up to the present day. 



The varied incidents of Winchester's long career 

 and the prominent part it has played in the history of 

 the country have fascinated many writers, and 

 several books have had it as their theme, from Milner, 

 to, in late years, the Misses Bramston and Leroy, the 

 Rev. William Benham, and the Rev. A. G. 

 L'Estrange. The city has indeed been fortunate in 

 its historians. Yet its many treasures, with the 

 multiplicity of detailed information, have not, we 

 believe, been garnered into such a storehouse of in- 

 formation as the Rev. J. Silvester Davies's " History 

 of Southampton," or that msnumental "History of 

 Basingstoke," by Mr. F. J. Baigent and Canon 

 Millard. On the other hand these two towns have 

 not had their life and growth brought before us in 

 such a pleasant readable form as Winchester has. 

 Perhaps their turn is still to come. Southampton, at 

 any rate, has great claim to be included amongst our 

 important " historic towns." 



* "Winchester." By G. W. Kitchin, D.D., F.S.A., 

 Dean of Winchester. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 

 1890. Cr. 8vo. 



