yellow and red array which becomes that tree so well.

We pass through the street of Burnham, once a market town of importance, and, if local tradition be correct, a royal residence, but now little more than a straggling village. The church, however, is a fine specimen of Gothic architecture, mainly of the fourteenth century. The nave has lately been handsomely restored, and it is to be hoped that the chancel and tower will soon meet with similar good fortune. Some of the windows are particularly fine specimens of their kind; and the ancient carvings with which the late Lady Grenville adorned the sides of her family seat in the north transept will delight both the antiquary and the ecclesiastical architect.

Mr. C. Knight reminds us that the learned Jacob Bryant spent the last days of his life at Cippenham, in this parish, where he died, when verging on ninety, from an accident with which he met, whilst reaching down a book from an upper shelf in his library—a death which, as has been well and wittily remarked, was, for a literary man, to expire on the field of honour, if not on the field of battle.

16

A DAY AT SHANKLIN.

OF all the fair spots which dot the pleasant southern coast of England, in spring or summer, autumn or winter, few are fairer than the Isle of Wight and in that lovely island a traveller might walk hither and thither for many a long day before he could find out a spot more delicious than Shanklin, on its south-eastern coast. Looking down upon the calm blue sea from above the ruddy sandstone cliffs through which opens the 'Chine,' it seems the model of a watering-place for those who wish for peace and retirement; for peaceful and quiet it still is, though we fear that the recent opening of a railway to it from Ryde will shortly put an end to its charms, and cover the green fields which now surround it with rows of 'Prospect Villas,' and cockney 'Victoria Terraces.' At present it reminds one of the green retreats of Babbicombe or Clovelly, though on a considerably smaller scale.

The late Lord Jeffrey, who lived here for a time,'

1 He was living as a visitor here in 1846, the year before his death.

and had a good eye for the picturesque in scenery, and who, as a native of Scotland, would not carelessly or causelessly have praised the south in comparison with the charms of his own native hills and coasts, thus writes of it only a year or two before his death: 'The village is very small and scattery, all mixed up with trees, and lying among sweet airy falls and swells of ground, which finally rise up behind into breezy downs, 800 feet high, and sink down in the front to the edge of the varying cliffs, which overhang a pretty beach of fine sand, and are approachable by a very striking wooded ravine, which they call the Chine.'

Having read this picturesque description, and having heard much of the beauties of Shanklin, I resolved to pay it a hasty visit; and happening to be at Ryde, I took the train early one morning, and soon found myself at my destination, or, at all events, near it. A walk of a quarter of a mile brought me to the village; where, turning to my left, and passing through a meadow that had been recently invaded by the demon of bricks and mortar, I found myself at the top of some rustic steps, roughly hewn in the surface of the cliff, which soon led me down to the 'pretty beach' so pleasantly indicated by Lord Jeffrey. The waves were moving in a lazy ripple, and some little children, whose picturesque dresses made me wish that I were an artist and could sketch them with the pencil of a Leech or a Millais, were

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