By Parkhurst there is a pleasant way to Gurnard Bay, the nearest bathing-place on the coast. Cowes, under half a dozen miles off, may be gained by roads on either side the river, or by boat when the tide serves. The well-shod and wary explorer might trace the Medina upwards through the Downs, and among the peaty bogs of the “Wilderness” on to its obscure source behind the Undercliff. On either side the “quarried downs of Wight” offer fine airy walks with valley villages for goal, or such points as the ancient British settlement, whose pit dwellings may be traced by an antiquary’s eye in the hollow below Rowborough Downs, near the road leading south from Carisbrooke. On the other side of the Medina, by St George’s Down, is mounted the ridge of chalk stretching to Brading and Bembridge. In fact Newport, too much neglected by tourists, unless as a halting-place, would make an excellent station for visiting the whole Island. I must be content with taking the reader on by the central railway to the Undercliff. This goes out from Newport with the line to Sandown, threading the Downs into the Yar Valley; then at Merston Junction it turns off towards the southern heights swelling up beyond Godshill station. But one must not forget to mention Shide, on the outskirts of Newport, not only as a station for its golf-links on Pan Down, but as a spot in wider touch with the world than any other on the Island, for here Dr John Milne, F.R.S., has his Seismological Observatory, if that be a fit title for an installation of instruments by which earthquakes, thousands of miles away, are recorded long before they get into newspapers--some indeed that never get into further notice, spending their force at the bottom of the sea or in wildernesses beyond the ken of “our own correspondent.” Godshill is one of the prettiest of the Island villages, claiming its name from that oft-told legend of supernatural interference with the building of a church, which by miraculous power was moved to its present site on an eminence, where it holds up its tower as a conspicuous landmark. This church is often visited both for the prospect from it, and for its architectural merits and interesting memorials. Besides a sixteenth century altar tomb of Sir John Leigh and monuments of the Worsley family, it contains a specimen of their once famous art collection in a picture of _Daniel in the Lion’s Den_, said to be in part by Rubens, or at least after his style. An older patron is recorded by a tablet praising one of the benefactors of the Newport Grammar School. Here lies the mortal part of Richard Gard, While his freed spirit meets with heaven’s reward; His gifts endowed the schools, the needy raised And by the latest memory will be praised. And may our Isle be filled with such a name, And be like him whom virtue clothed with fame; Blessed with the poor, the scholars too were blest Through such a donor that is gone to rest.