Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/26

Rh looking to a college education in their perspective, or a "farm in the West:" something better than a few chance pennies from a traveller. But though there are few prizes for them in the lottery of life here, I was glad to see them looking comfortability clad, well fed, and healthy.

We diverged at the beautiful village of Shanklin, and walked to Shanklin Chine a curious fissure, worn, I believe, in the hills by a rivulet. The place is as wild as our ice-glen; and the rocks, instead of being overgrown with palmy ferns, maiden's hair, and lichens, like ours, are fringed with sweet pease, wallfowers, stocks, hyacinths, and all growing at their own sweet will; this betokens an old neighbourhood of civilization.

A woman came forth from a cottage to unlock a gate through which we must pass to go up the Chine. K. says the beauties of Nature are as jealously locked up here as the beauties of a harem. It is the old truth, necessity teaches economy; whatever can be made a source of revenue is so made, and the old women and children are tax-gatherers. At every step some new object or usage starts up before us; and it strikes us the more because the people are speaking our own language, and are essentially like our own.

In the narrowest part of our pathway, where the rill had become a mere thread, we had the pleasure of encountering the Halls. They were walking to Bon Church. We asked leave to join them. You