rom its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large
and flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk,
which, in the regularity of its plantation, vies with the power of art,
and in its wanton exuberancy greatly exceeds it.

In a field in the ascent of this hill, about a quarter of a mile from
the sea, stands a neat little chapel. It is very small, but adequate to
the number of inhabitants; for the parish doth not seem to contain above
thirty houses.

At about two miles distant from this parish lives that polite and good
lady to whose kindness we were so much obliged. It is placed on a hill
whose bottom is washed by the sea, and which from its eminence at top,
commands a view of great part of the island as well as it does that of
the opposite shore. This house was formerly built by one Boyce, who,
from a blacksmith at Gosport, became possessed, by great success in
smuggling, of forty thousand pound. With part of this he purchased an
estate here, and, by chance probably, fixed on this spot for building
a large house. Perhaps the convenience of carrying on his business, to
which it is so well adapted, might dictate the situation to him. We can
hardly, at least, attribute it to the same taste with which he furnished
his house, or at least his library, by sending an order to a bookseller
in London to pack him up five hundred pounds' worth of his handsomest
books. They tell here several almost incredible stories of the
ignorance, the folly, and the pride, which this poor man and his wife
discovered during the short continuance of his prosperity; for he did
not long escape the sharp eyes of the revenue solicitors, and was, by
extents from the court of Exchequer, soon reduced below his original
state to that of confinement in the Fleet. All his effects were sold,
and among the rest his books, by an auction at Portsmouth, for a
very small price; for the bookseller was now discovered to have been
perfectly a master of his trade, and, relying on Mr. Boyce's finding
little time to read, had sent him not only the most lasting wares of his
shop, but duplicates of the same, under different titles.

His estate and house were purchased by a gentleman of these parts, whose
widow now enjoys them, and who hath improved them, particularly her
gardens, with so elegant a taste, that the painter who would assist his
imagination in the composition of a most exquisite landscape, or the
poet who would describe a