h the town stretching
along its slope, a panorama of villas whose trees grow down to the
water's edge. It is an ancient town, having existed in the reign of
Richard II., when the French burned it, but none of the present
buildings are of much antiquity, it having in later years been gradually
converted into a fashionable watering-place. The pier is the popular
promenade, and the Spithead roadstead in front is closely connected with
English naval history. It was here that the "Royal George" went down on
a calm day and drowned her admiral and eight hundred men: she was
careened over, the better to make some repairs, and, a squall striking
her, it is said the heavy guns slid down to the lower side and tipped
the vessel over, when she quickly filled and sank. Here also, in 1797,
was the great mutiny in Lord Bridport's fleet, the sailors, when the
signal to weigh anchor was given, declining to do it until their just
demands were granted; the mutiny was suppressed and the leaders severely
punished. All the neighboring shores bristle with forts and batteries
protecting the entrance to Spithead. Inland are the Binstead quarries,
whose stone was in demand in the Middle Ages and built parts of
Winchester Cathedral, Beaulieu Abbey, and Christchurch; also, here are
the scanty remains of Quarr Abbey. Eastward of Ryde the coast is low and
bends more to the southward, reaching the estuary known as Brading
Harbor, a broad sheet of water at full tide, but a dismal expanse of mud
at low water, through which a small stream meanders. At Brading is the
old Norman church which St. Wilfrid founded, of which Rev. Legh
Richmond, author of the _Annals of the Poor_, was the curate. In the
churchyard is the grave of his heroine, little Jane, the "Dairyman's
Daughter." Extensive remains of a Roman villa have been discovered at
Morton, near Brading, and to the eastward of them a hyptocaust.
Rounding the Foreland, which is the easternmost point of the island, the
chalk-rocks rise again, and Whitecliff Bay nestles under the protection
of the lofty Culver Cliff as the coastline bends south-west and then
makes a grand semicircular sweep to the southward around Sandown Bay.
This wide expanse broadens between the two chalk-ridges that cross the
Isle of Wight from its western side. The railway from Ryde runs across
the chalk-downs to the growing watering place of Sandown, standing on
the lowest part of the shores of the bay. Here the coast is guarded by a
g