THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 52 1 



when these hedges are all white with blossoms, the whole Island 

 must be a very gay landscape but just now, they only served to 

 confirm me in my opinion of the Englishman's fondness for seclu- 

 sion and privacy, in his own demesne. Just in proportion to the 

 smallness of his place, his desire to shut out all the rest of the world 

 increases so that if he only owns half an acre, his hedge shall be 

 eight feet high, and the sanctity of the paradise within remains in- 

 violate. The solid, high, well-built stone wall around some of the 

 little cottage and villa places, of half an acre, on the south side of 

 the Island, astonished me, and gave me a new understanding of the 

 saying, that " every man's house is his castle." Here, at least, I 

 thought, it is clear that people understand what is meant by private 

 rights, and intend to have them respected. 



It was not until I reached the pretty villages of Bowchurch, 

 Shanklin, and Ventnor, that my ideal of the Isle of Wight was re- 

 alized. These villages lie on the south side of the Island, backed 

 by steep hills, and sloping to the sea. The climate is almost per- 

 fection. It is neither hot in summer nor cold in winter, and though 

 open to all the sea-breezes, the latter seem shorn of all their violence 

 here. The consequence is, they enjoy that perfect marriage of the 

 land and sea so rarely witnessed in northern climates. The finest 

 groves and woods, the richest shrubbery and flower-gardens, the 

 most emerald-like glades of turf, here run down almost to the beach, 

 and you have all the luxuriant beauty of vegetation, in its loveliest 

 forms, joined to all the sublimity, life and excitement of the ocean 

 views, As to the climate, you may judge of its mildness and uni- 

 formity, when I tell you that the bay trees of the Mediterranean 

 grow here on the lawns, as luxuriantly as snow-balls do at home, and 

 fuchsias, as tall as your head, make rich masses in almost every 

 garden, and stand the winter as well here, as lilacs or syringoes do 

 with us. In the neighborhood of Shanklin, I saw a charming old 

 parsonage house the very picture of spacious ease and comfort 

 with its great bay windows, its picturesque gables, and its thatched 

 roo f quite embowered in tall myrtles Roman myrtles one of 

 our cherished green-house plants, that here have grown thirty or 

 forty feet high, quite above the eaves ! Bays, Portugal laurels, hol- 

 lies and China roses, surround this parsonage x and never lose their 



