sles of the nave very effective
from the strength of the cross ribs. The clerestory windows of the
quire very large. The organ is on one side. But the best thing about
the quire is the wooden stall-work, of early decorated, very
beautiful. A superb Lady Chapel, of early English.

* * * * *

PORTSMOUTH,
_1840, June 23_.

We left Winchester by evening train to the Dolphin, Southampton, and
slept there. At nine in the morning we went by steamboat down the
river to Ryde in the Isle of Wight: our steamer was going on to
Portsmouth, but we thought it better to land at Ryde and take a boat
for ourselves. We then sailed out (rather a blowing day) to the vessel
attending Col. Pasley's operations, and after a good deal of going
from one boat to another (the sea being so rough that our boat could
not be got up to the ships) and a good deal of waiting, we got on
board the barge or lump in which Col. Pasley was. Here we had the
satisfaction of seeing the barrel of gunpowder lowered (there was more
than a ton of gunpowder), and seeing the divers go down to fix it,
dressed in their diving helmets and supplied with air from the great
air-pump above. When all was ready and the divers had ascended again,
the barge in which we were was warped away, and by a galvanic battery
in another barge (which we had seen carried there, and whose
connection with the barrel we had seen), upon signal given by sound of
trumpet, the gunpowder was fired. The effect was most wonderful. The
firing followed the signal instantaneously. We were at between 100 and
200 yards from the place (as I judge), and the effects were as
follows. As soon as the signal was given, there was a report, louder
than a musket but not so loud as a small cannon, and a severe shock
was felt at our feet, just as if our barge had struck on a
rock. Almost immediately, a very slight swell was perceived over the
place of the explosion, and the water looked rather foamy: then in
about a second it began to rise, and there was the most enormous
outbreak of spray that you can conceive. It rose in one column of 60
or 70 feet high, and broad at the base, resembling a stumpy sheaf with
jagged masses of spray spreading out at the sides, and seemed to grow
outwards till I almost feared that it was coming to us. It sunk, I
suppose, in separate parts, for i