I saw the window where the King made one last effort to be free. Sir Thomas Herbert’s portraiture rose all before me, and a thousand busy thoughts, which any one may imagine, but which language fails to arrest, much more to convey. Ascending to the keep, surveying the undulating scenery, and loitering here and there among the ruins, the past, the entrancing past floated around me like an atmosphere; and I felt how much more powerful than romance, is the charm of historic fact, when invested with living interest, by associations of religion, by connections with surviving realities, and by the perpetual attraction and moral sublimity of an example of greatness and worth, tried in the furnace of affliction. Nor did I forget that lily among thorns, the little princess who died in this doleful prison, of a broken heart, after bewailing her father’s murder a single year. The sweet child, Elizabeth! what a thought it was to imagine her moaning her young life away, amid these gloomy walls, surrounded only by the butchers of her adored parent, mocking her woes! Among tales of childhood’s sorrows, there have been few like hers. Everybody has heard of “a pebble in Carisbrooke well.” I tried the usual experiments, and saw a lamp let down in it, three hundred feet, and then drank of the water, drawn by donkey-power, with all the sublime emotions conceivable on such an occasion. There is a story that the well was originally of Roman construction, and that the Romans had a fortress here, which it first supplied. At any rate, it is a very good well, and no doubt administered many a refreshing draught to the royal prisoners, to whom “a cup of cold water” was well nigh all that the charity of the place afforded. Crossing from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth, I had a fine sight, in the incessant broadsides which were fired by her Majesty’s ship, the “Vengeance,” anchored at Spithead, apparently for exercise, or sport. The gallant ship, the blazing port-holes, the rolling clouds of smoke, and the reverberating thunders, made our transit, from shore to shore, one of exciting interest. The “Royal George” went down just in that anchorage, and there she lies now. I paid a visit to the “Victory,” in the harbour of Portsmouth, after an unsuccessful effort to board the beautiful yacht, in which the Queen makes her progresses by sea. On the deck of the “Victory” fell the idolized Nelson: a small brass plate marks the spot. After looking at this, and trying to reproduce the scene, I descended to the cock-pit, and surveyed the dark and gloomy cell in which he breathed his last, reclining against a huge rib of his ship. Poor soul! If he had but served God as he served his King, there would have been a glory in that death, beyond that of “victory, or Westminster Abbey.” After a rapid survey of the dock-yards, I made my way, by rail, to Chichester.