Under them the Island was happy enough to have little history, though it had again to be on its guard when Dutch admirals talked of sweeping the English ships from the Channel. It saw William’s fleet sail by on the way to Torbay; and two years later it seemed about to have from its southern cliffs the spectacle of a hundred French sail engaging the English and Dutch squadrons; but the scene of that encounter was shifted to Beachy Head, where it ended in a manner not much dwelt upon in our naval annals. Then the long struggle with Napoleon once more turned this outpost of England into a camp. In the peaceful days that followed, the governorship became a mere ceremonial function. The title, held by Prince Henry of Battenberg, was passed on to his widow, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, whose death at Osborne makes the last date in this Island chronicle. An insulated people naturally formed a race apart, speaking a marked dialect, and cherishing a strong local feeling. Their situation, and the once pressing need to stand on defence by land and sea, bred a sturdy race, whose vigour in old days was apt to run to such enterprising ways of life as piracy, wrecking, and smuggling; but all that may be forgotten like scandal about Queen Elizabeth. One evil of the islanders keeping so much to themselves has been a stagnation of population, that through intermarriage made for degeneracy. Sir John Oglander, the Stuart worthy whose jottings on his contemporaries prove so amusing, says that the Island once bore the reproach of not producing a good horse, a wise man, or a pretty woman; but he hastens to add _Tempora mutant_; and on the last head, the stranger can judge the calumny for himself. Hassell, an eighteenth century tourist, remarks for his part on the beauty and even elegance of the farmers’ daughters at Newport market, while of the fathers he hints at grog-blossoms as a too common feature. The lately published memoirs of Captain Elers treat the former point as matter of notoriety. A certain boisterous pertness noted in the male youth of the Island has been referred by sociologists to an absence of birch in its flora. All ages have been noted for a clannishness that was once disposed to look askance on such “overners” or “overers” as found their way into the Wight, whose own stock we see to have sprung from immigrants of different breeds. But here, as elsewhere, schools, newspapers, and facilities of travel are fast rubbing down the prejudices of parish patriotism.