Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/176

142 and miles of the Queen's private property,—large oak forests and extensive fields under cultivation; we saw the Osborne Palace from a distance and drove past the Prince of Wales's property, and visited the church which the Queen attends when she is at Osborne. We then drove to the town of Cowes and thence on to the historic castle of Carisbrooke where king Charles I. was kept a prisoner. My daughters saw with great interest the famous window through which the king is said to have attempted his escape, and from the top of the watch-tower we had an extensive view of the country all round. It was nearly evening before we could return to Ryde, and it was night before we came back to Littlehampton.

No excursions, however, that we made were more pleasant than our daily strolls on the sand. I had not taken a sea bath for years past. When I first jumped into the limpid and cool water, I felt I had never had a more luxurious bath in my life! My children too enjoyed their sea baths, while the two youngest of them were busy the whole day long with their spades and their buckets—building castles on the sand, only to be washed away when the tide returned! Musicians with their organs discoursed "sweet" music on the beach, one Italian girl sang in her sweet native tongue, and itinerant photographers went about photographing parties as they basked lazily on the beach. My children thought it was a grand opportunity and had themselves photographed, but as they had happened to pay the honest artist in advance, it was long, and after much difficulty