As might be expected from its geographical position and the many centuries it has been a gate to central England, Southampton has had a chequered and eventful history. Before the days of those supposedly impregnable forts in Spithead which bar to all inimical visitors a passage up the Water, the town was not immune from attack from the sea and in 1338 an allied French, Genoese and Spanish fleet sailed up the estuary and attacked the town to such good purpose that the burgesses were forced to fly and from a safe distance saw their homes burned to the ground. Another assault was made by the French in 1432, but profiting by bitter experience, the citizens had by now constructed such defences and armed them so well that this attack was an ignominious failure. The port was the scene of several great expeditions overseas before it gave its quota to that greatest of all crusades in 1914. It saw the start of Richard Lion-Heart's transports, filled with the chivalry of England, on their way to challenge the power of Islam. The town records show that 800 hogs were supplied by the citizens for feeding the army _en route_. Perhaps the most famous of the sailings was that of the twenty-one ships that carried the English army to the victory of Creçy. Again seventy years later there was another great sallying forth to the field of Agincourt, nearly frustrated by the machinations of Richard, Earl of Cambridge. This scion of the Plantagenets and his fellow conspirators were beheaded and afterwards buried, as recorded on a tablet there, in the chapel of God's House. From Southampton the _Mayflower_ and _Speedwell_ sailed in 1620: the latter being discarded at Plymouth. The modern aspect of Southampton's streets is that of the bustle and activity of a midland town, and the narrow pavements of Below and Above Bar have that metropolitan air which a crowd of well-dressed people intent on business or pleasure gives to the better class provincial city. It would seem that the inevitable accompaniment of such prosperity is the meanness of poorly-built and squalidly-kept suburbs. When the superb situation of Southampton is considered one can but hope that some day, in the new England that we are told is on the way, a great transformation will take place on the shores of Itchen and Test.