sparent blue as the eye glanced
from the horizon toward the zenith, was without a trace of cloud, and
against this pure and exquisitely tinted background the outlines of
Hurst Castle stood sharply out, the castle itself and the low spit of
land on which it is built appearing of a deep, rich, powerful, purple
hue, as though carved out of a giant amethyst, while the country further
inland exhibited tints varying from the deepest olive--almost
approaching black--through the richest greens, away to the most delicate
of pearly greys in the remote distance. The Wight--about a quarter of a
mile distant on our port hand--presented a picture of exquisite and
almost fairy-like beauty, with its wooded slopes, waving cornfields, and
grassy dells, aglow with the rich purply-golden haze of sunset,
repeating their beauties in the waveless tide which washed its shores.
As I stood gazing entranced upon the varied beauties of earth, sea, and
sky, the scene gradually changed, a marvellous transformation was taking
place, the sky tints deepened into a warmer, richer glow, the colours of
the landscape slowly faded into sombre neutral, the castle stood out
black as ebony against the dying flush in the sky, the water blushed
crimson for a moment, then paled to a cold greyish purple as a faint
breeze began to ruffle its surface, the azure of the sky became
momentarily deeper and richer and more purple in tone, and presently,
out from the clear cerulean depths started into view the planet Venus,
beaming down upon us with a soft, silvery, lambent radiance, and tracing
upon the bosom of the darkening wave a delicate thread of quivering
liquid light--

"`Who can paint like Nature?'" said a voice at my elbow, while an arm
was slid quietly within my own, and I found myself joined by young
Raleigh, a fellow-mid--and by all accounts a scion of the same family as
the renowned Sir Walter--"what mortal brush could hope to emulate the
exquisite softness, delicacy, richness, and power of those tints which
have just faded out of the picture before us, or what artist could
adequately express the quiet, dreamy beauty of the present scene? Dame
Nature has been kind in permitting what will probably be our last
glimpse for some time to come of our native land, to be one of such
surpassing loveliness. We are bound to a region the beauty of which has
been for ages a favourite theme among poets, yet I fancy many of us will
look with yearning fondness upon the ch