ay
that she is the real genius of Venice. But the viceroy, having heard
indirectly and confusedly of Count Lichtenstein's perilous adventure,
begged the patriarch to pronounce a great exorcism over the lagoons, and
since then Orco has never reappeared."

L. W. J.

IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

The Solent Sea, the channel dividing the Isle of Wight from the
mainland, varies in breadth from one to six miles. The island must at
one time have formed a portion of the mainland, and so late as when the
Greeks traded with Cornwall for tin the Solent is said to have been
passable at low water by men and carts.

The circumference of the island is about sixty miles, the surface
undulating, with a range of fine downs running through from east to
west, having here and there points of considerable elevation. It is said
to have been well wooded formerly, but no forests remain, and the
hedge-rows, coppices and scattered trees are all it can now offer in the
way of foliage. The scenery of the north side of the island is quiet,
pleasing, here and there picturesque, but the southern side is full of
the beauty of bold cliffs, chasms, irregular coast- and hill-lines,
tumbled rocks, bare, wind-swept hills, and sheltered coves where flowers
bloom and ivy climbs from the very verge of the sea. On this side lies
the famous region known as the Undercliff--a series of terraces rising
ambitiously from the sea up the steep sides of St. Boniface's Down--the
tract being about seven miles long, and from a quarter to half a mile
broad.

On the one hand, the bold promontories, the shell-like bays of the
sea-line; on the other, the lofty, rounded down, with here and there its
buttress of gray rock coming out in naked grandeur; between the two a
lovely irregularity of soft slope, sinuous or dimple-like valleys, dark
ravines, velvet-smooth laps of terrace, with now and again a sudden
springing brook, and everywhere the thickets of holly and cedar
clambered rampantly over by masses of ivy and traveler's joy--_our_
Virgin's bower clematis--and such sunshine as falls not elsewhere in
England over all.

Miss Sewell, the author of _Amy Herbert, Ivors_ and _Ursula_, who
resides at Bonchurch with her sisters, where they have a school, says of
the Undercliff: "There is a verse spoken of a very different country
which often comes to my mind when I think of it: 'It is a land which the
Lord thy God careth for. The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon
it