Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/55

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
ENGLAND.
31

cluding charging and obstinate resistance and carrying positions till at last the assailants were driven to the brink of the sea and surrendered. The review gives one an idea, faint as it may be, of real battle, and I watched the whole affair with very great interest.

Brighton is a fine sea-side town, and the houses on the Parade are more like palaces than ordinary buildings. It is the largest and most fashionable sea-side town in England, and in the season time is flocked by hundreds and thousands of people from all parts of England. A stranger coming to Brighton at the season time cannot fail being struck with the pomp and splendour, the mirth and gaiety, the beauty and magnificence of the place,—with the music on the parade, the swell carriages whirling through the hundred streets, and the swell people flocking to the numerous haunts of amusement. Surely he would take it to be the seat of fashion and the paradise of luxury.

From Brighton we went to Worthing, a pretty and quiet sea-side town, and thence to Arundel where we saw the castle said to be the oldest in England. It is said to have existed at the time of Alfred the Great, and large additions have been made by William the Conqueror. Arundel castle.From the watch-tower we had an extensive view of the country all round. We left Arundel and went to Portsmouth, and thence to the Isle of Wight—the garden of England—so called for its luxuriant vegetation and beautiful country prospects. We went to Ryde, Shanklin and Ventnor (towns in the Isle of Wight) and after having