The mere mention of the latter town, with its many and crowded memories of the past, seems to bear with it a taste of salt air and the invigorating quality of a sea breeze, and there seems little doubt but that the Danes harried Portsmouth on several occasions, as they did most south coast towns of any consequence. And it is also equally probable that it was here that some at least of the galleys with which Alfred the Great formed the nucleus of the English navy were built, and that they sallied forth through the narrow harbour mouth to inflict the crushing defeat upon the marauders in the Solent, which constituted one of the most important of the many naval battles that Alfred fought. It was near Portsmouth, too, that Harold II’s fleet two centuries later cruised aimlessly about for some time ere sailing northward with the object of preventing the landing of William of Normandy, which took place eastward further up the coast; and it was here, in 1139, that Matilda, daughter of Henry I, landed with a handful of knights, and a few serving men, to attempt to win the English throne; and Portsmouth was also the place of departure for Richard Cœur de Lion on his final expedition to the Holy Land. Indeed, almost every foot of ground upon which the older portion of the town now stands is pregnant with historic events, and memories of the England of the past which, from the dim ages when Portsmouth began to take shape, has been ever great, upon the narrow and wider seas, save for a short period in the reign of that pleasure-loving monarch, Charles II, when the Dutch swept the Channel. As one walks its streets memories come to one of the innumerable gallant men--many unsung in ballad and unrecorded in the pages of history, though deserving both honours--who during the past centuries have set forth boldly upon enterprises for the preservation of Britain’s empire of the sea and the maintenance of her honour and glory afloat. There is the famous “Hard.” Who that has read Marryat’s _Peter Simple_ does not know it, and cannot in his mind’s eye conjure up the picture of the famous place with the pig-tailed “salts” who frequented it in Nelson’s, and Howe’s, and Rodney’s times? Mudie, in his _History of Hampshire_, though doing scant justice to the interest and story of Portsmouth, gives a fairly vivid sketch of the famous “Hard” about this period. He writes: “Immediately beyond the gun wharves there is an opening, with the buildings of Portsea on the other side. This is the Common’s Hard, and it and the row (houses) opposite are much devoted to the sale of frippery, so that this is neither the most cleanly nor the most moral spot in England. It is,” he goes on to say, “the great landing-place from the ships in the harbour--at least, for the common sailors and those who keep up intercourse with them.... This common Hard displays no very pleasant scene in times of peace; in war time it must be far worse.”