hose landed here to dispute the crown with his
usurping brother, and Maud to assert her rights
against Stephen. Its name flashes out here and
there, like a revolving light, in the feudal
story of England. The French burned it under
Richard the Second, a surprise revenged on their
own shores by-and-by. Edward the Fourth
made fortifications there, to which Henry the
Seventh added. Under the Eighth Harry, the
Mary Rose, our finest ship up to that time, went
down off its coast, forerunner of the catastrophe
of the Royal George in the last century. In
Portsmouth, Charles the First landed when he
returned from his Spanish journey, little
foreseeing the fate of his favourite, Buckingham,
from Felton's knife at the same place. What
various faces and scenes were witnessed by that
old corporation, which sent a member to Parliament,
too, from a very early period.

When we come down to quite modern times,
Portsmouth becomes more and more conspicuous,
the poetry and the humour of sea-life gather
about it. Cowper sings, in clear, simple,
funeral-bell notes, the loss of that great line-of-battle
ship of Kempenfelt's, which sucked into a
whirlpool, formed by itself, hundreds of human
lives. Yet the cheerful associations predominate.
Brave old admirals in pigtails rise before one in
thinking of it, and we fancy them rounding the
island, with captured Frenchmen in company,
amidst the cheering and ringing of the town.
King George goes down there to dine with Lord
Howe after the First of June. Marryat's
midshipmen leap from the roof of the coach at the
door of the Blue Posts, and a quieter, but not
less plucky race of lads, who are about to
embark in the Ramchunder, Indiaman, for the
Hooghly. Portsmouth is changed in some
social aspects now, and has become at once a
greater naval station and arsenal and a less
interesting town. Southampton has carried
away one stream of traffic, and Liverpool
another, thanks to the development of all-changing
steam. Portsmouth Proper—that part of
the place which gives its name to the whole—has
suffered most. The expanding power is in the
great eastern suburbs of Southsea, where has
arisen a town and population of its own, with
crescents, squares, and terraces of the latest
sea-side fashion, and new fortifications to match.
On the whole, Portsmouth is a dull place, the
garrison and squadron say; best in winter (add
the faster men), when there is hunting in the
neighbourhood, and good company in consequence.

But you may hunt in many places, and our
present object is naval, and the summer for us
when the sea is concerned; and so we ask the
reader to accompany us this fine autumn to the
most Portsmouth-ian part of Portsmouth. Let
him place himself with us in an old-fashioned,
queerly-built hotel on "Point," built on the
very water of the harbour, on your right
(perhaps I should say "starboard") side as you enter
from the offing. We mount a balcony standing
out into the sea-breeze (which same breeze
shakes your windows at night), and from which
you can have a capital bird's-eye view. Nothing
like a bird's-eye view (when your bird is not a
goose!) to begin with.

Well, there, on your left, is fair "Vecta," the
Isle of Wight, green and round, and with the
white town of Ryde glittering in the sunlight at
its fringe. There spreads the Channel squadron
before you. H.M.S. James Watt, H.M.S. Hero,
H.M.S. Algiers, H.M.S. Royal Albert (three-decker),
H.M.S. Agamemnon, are the liners.
The Edgar and Neptune, also liners, have sailed
for Portland, where it is easier to get the crews
into order. The frigates are the Impérieuse
(nauticè, the Imperoose), Mersey, Emerald, and
Diadem. In the distance, near Ryde, lies the
Russian frigate which brought Duke Constantine
the other day, and two more Russian
frigates and a liner (with the blue St. Andrew's
cross waving) lie at the other end of our
squadron. What a brilliant spectacle Spithead
makes with all these vessels lying there, the
sunlight glittering on their chequered sides, the
wind making their colours fly, and in and out,
round and round the floating castles, the
white-canvased yachts, the sea-butterflies among the
sea-eagles! It is a great yachting time, and in
these kingdoms (let us mention in passing) there
is an average of eight thousand skilled seamen
afloat under yachting flags.

Turn now to the opposite side of the harbour.
Before you is Block-house Point, a portion of
our fortifications. It looks very fresh and
cheerful, the effect of the brickwork of which
great part of it is composed. I have been told,
however, that that kind of stuff is not good for
fortifications, is made havoc of by shot, and is
inferior far to the earthwork which we see
specimens of in the bastions of Gosport and
Portsmouth. Naval men, when the subject of
the fortifications comes on the tapis, declare that
the only passages for ships can be blocked up
by sinking craft, that, besides, there are plenty
of undefended landing-places on the Sussex
coast (near Selsey Bill, and so on) which would
be attacked in preference to Portsmouth. Our
ancestors, in their primitive way, had a chain
across the harbour when needed, but that was
before the era of Lancaster and Armstrong
guns. Near Blockhouse Point is Haslar Hospital,
spacious, airy, imposing; and on the same
(or Gosport) side is Haslar Creek, where our
gunboats are at present drawn up, peacefully
reposing till wanted again. The eye, sweeping
round to the right, now takes in Gosport
(constantly connected with Portsmouth by a steam
bridge), and wandering past the victualling
buildings and huge biscuit bakery, loses the
distinction of objects in the distant inner part of
the harbour.

But we are on the harbour itself in our
balcony, and a stirring scene it is in a
time of unwonted naval activity. Two
three-deckers are the most tranquil objects
there—H.M.S. Britannia and H.M.S.
Victory—the last bearing the blue flag of
Admiral Bowles. The Britannia, I remember,
years ago, in the Mediterranean, commanded by