to pay for the view we had, when, just at the summit of the hill, the mist rolled off like the furling of a sail, and we saw the village of Shanklin (the gem!), with its ivied walls, its roses, its everything that flowers, broad fields of corn, and the steep cliffs down to Shanklin Chine. Shall I ever forget the little in and out cottages jutted against the rocks, the narrow lanes that afford yon glimpses, through green and flowery walls, of these picture-dwellings?
As we strolled down the road from Boa Church I stopped at a cottage inhabited by very poor people. There were four distinct homes under one roof, and an enclosed strip of ground in front, four feet wide. This space was full of verbenas, stocks, roses, and geraniums; and an old crone between eighty and ninety was tending them. I thought of the scrawny lilacs and woody rosebushes in some of our courtyards, and blushed, or, rather, I shall blush if ever I see an English eye upon them; for (shame to us!) it is the detection, and not the sin, that calls up the blush.
Our first stop after leaving Ventnor was at St Lawrence's Church, the smallest in England; you shall have its dimensions from some poetry we bought of the beadle, his own manufacture.
"This church has often drawn the curious eye |
