At an early hour on the morning of the third day after the Prince of Spain’s public entry into Southampton, a remarkably handsome young gallant—tall, graceful in figure and deportment, and very becomingly attired in a doublet of green velvet, slashed with white silk, and wearing a small velvet beret of the some colour, adorned with a white plume, on his head—issued from the south gate of Winchester, and passing through the grove of stately elms, colonised by rooks, then environing this side of the ancient city, struck across the charming valley watered by the Itchen. The morning was lovely enough to have tempted the veriest sluggard to quit his couch, and our handsome young galliard seemed fully alive to its beauties. The sun had but just o’ertopped sweet Saint Catherine’s Hill. The grass was heavy with dew, and a thin haze hung in some parts of the valley, but this quickly disappeared. All nature looked bright and smiling. The warblers of the grove carolled blithely, the larks soared aloft rejoicingly, and a cloud of clamorous rooks, quitting the tall trees near the city, winged their way towards the marsh lands further south. Scared by the young man’s approach, the stately heron started from the river in which he was fishing, while other aquatic fowl dived beneath the green water-weeds and disappeared. At no time are we so susceptible to Nature’s beauties as at early morn. Our senses of delight are quicker then than at any other season, and invigorated by the freshness of the atmosphere, we find something to charm in every object we behold. So it was with the young gallant in question. He was familiar with the scene around him, yet he discovered beauties in it of which he had been hitherto unconscious. His eye ranged along the valley through which strayed the winding Itchen, pleased with all it encountered, until his gaze settled on the secluded hospital of Saint Croix. Never before, it seemed to him, had the ancient edifice looked so lovely, so sequestered, as it did now. Though partially screened by trees, enough was visible to evidence its size and architectural beauty—the lofty gateway, the roofs of the quadrangular courts, and the square tower of the reverend church. A slight mist, enveloping but not hiding the outline of the pile, gave it a dreamlike character.