she answered she could not deny that, nor did she know she had omitted anything, but it was a poor bill for gentlefolks to pay.' Mrs. Francis's fare was far from luxurious, the butchers, so Fielding relates, never killing ox or sheep during 'bean and bacon season,' and he was obliged to send to a lady's house in the neighbourhood to beg some tea and vegetables, commodities that were not to be purchased in the town. Still the poor shattered novelist with his usual kindly good humour found much that was attractive at Ryde— 'that pleasant village' as he calls it, which at the time of his visit did not seem to contain above thirty houses.' October 3, 1885. COWES A DOCKYARD FOR THE SHIPS OF THE ROYAL NAVY. Not long ago I was asked, by a gentleman interested in the subject as to whether any vessels belonging to the Royal Navy had in former years been built at Cowes. At the time I was unable to answer the question. Since then I have come across the following extract in the History of the Isle of Wight by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, p. 168: Tomkins, writing in 1796, says, within the last sixty years this [Cowes] dockyard has contributed to the British Navy the following ships of war, namely the Vanguard of seventy guns, the Repulse of sixty-four, the Salisbury of sixty, the Cerberus and Astrea of thirty-two, the Veteran of sixty-four guns, and the Experiment of forty-five, besides a number of smaller vessels." January 24, 1891. THE REV. LEGH RICHMOND, M.A., IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT, A.D. 1797-1805. I. It was a happy thought in those who built the Mission Room in St. John's, Carisbrooke, to give it the name of the Legh Richmond Hall. Legh Richmond was a man of note, whose connexion with the Isle of Wight ought not to be forgotten. He belonged to what has been called 'The Evangelical Succession' in the Church of England. There can be no impropriety in reckoning him as one of the four Fathers who are held in well-deserved honour among the disciples of that school of religious thought. Thomas Scott was their interpreter of Holy Scripture, Joseph Milner their ecclesiastical historian, Henry Venn their systematic teacher of the whole Christian institutes, and Legh Richmond their popular tract-writer. Legh Richmond's tracts, The Dairyman's Daughter, The Negro Servant, and The Young Cottager, first made their appearance in print after his connexion with the Isle of Wight had ceased. They were sent by him to the columns of The Scottish Guardian, 1810-12. In 1814 they were united in one volume and published under the title of The Annals of the Poor. Their popularity was unexampled in this country; and after being presented to the Tract Society with which he was connected they were translated into most of the European languages. In a report of that society it has been stated that they 'led to most beneficial results in Nicomedia, successfully proclaiming the gospel in that city from which Diocletian issued his first edicts against Christianity. Although these three narratives were composed after Legh Richmond's departure from the Isle of Wight, they relate events connected with the useful discharge of his ministerial duties when Curate of Brading and Yaverland. The gravestone of Mrs. Berry, with its epitaph beginning 'Forgive, blest shade, the tributary tear' -which Dr. Calcott's music has rendered so familiar, and which first introduced 'Little Jane' to her biographer-is still standing in Brading churchyard; while immediately under the east window of the church is that of the Young Cottager' herself. A humble grave to the north-east of Arreton Church, with a head-stone bearing an epitaph of much simple beauty from the writer of her story, marks the resting-place of all that is mortal of Elizabeth Wallbridge, 'the dairyman's daughter.' The late Mr. Edmund Peel in his poem The Fair Island has given a sketch of the 'coloured cove' in Whitecliff Bay, where the Negro Servant' 'Held communion with the sky, (Fair Island, Book I. 9.) In these stories Mr. Legh Richmond has given some rather florid descriptions of Brading, Yaverland, Shanklin, and much of the neighbouring country. These descriptions of scenery in their day were much admired; they show his familiarity with the places he describes. They hardly suit the severer taste of the present day. Mr. John Ruskin had not yet risen on the horizon, nor had Nature passed through the alembic of his wonder-working imagination in Modern Painters, that book which has taught us so much. Yet in a small way Legh Richmond did for the Isle of Wight what Walter Scott did for the Scotch Highlands. Tourists asked to see the cottage where the dairyman's daughter lived, and pilgrimages were made to her grave and that of the young cottager. Though novelists have arrived at such honours, no tract writer probably ever gained that distinction. Mrs. Hannah More's Shepherd of Salisbury Plain had a certain reputation, 'but his fame has been eclipsed by that of The Dairyman's Daughter? The materials for drawing up this sketch of Legh Richmond's residence in the Isle of Wight have been mainly drawn from the life of him written by his friend and disciple, the Rev. T. S. Grimshawe, a Bedfordshire clergyman, 8vo, London, 1828. He was born of gentle blood, as we learn from his own interesting memoir of his mother, which will be found in Grimshawe's Life, pp. 405-454. 'His ancestors,' he says, 'had successively resided on the estate of Ashton Keynes in the county of Wilts from the Conquest. His grandfather was Rector of Stockport in Cheshire. His father, who had been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was a physician, first at Liverpool and then at Bath. Legh Richmond was born at Liverpool on January 29, 1772. His mother was a daughter of John Atherton, Esq., of Walton Hall near Liverpool. A near relative of his mother was Henry Cornwall Legh, Esq., of High Legh in the county of Chester, whence his Christian name of Legh. His parents had six children, three of whom died in infancy. Both father and mother were worthy, excellent people with cultivated minds and tastes. They steadily resisted,' so he writes, the torrent of vice, folly, and dissipation for which the gay city of Bath was distinguished.' When a mere boy, in leaping over a wall, he fell with violence to the ground and injured his leg so as to contract its growth, and afterwards to impair its use. The consequence was that he received the rudiments of his education from his father, who, as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was probably a far more accurate scholar and better mathematician than most ordinary schoolmasters. Before going to the University he had private tuition in a clergyman's house at Blandford in Dorsetshire. At the age of seventeen he matriculated at his father's college, Trinity, Cambridge, in the year 1789. Before entering on his undergraduate course, though he did not lisp in numbers' as a boy of eleven, he wrote some creditable verses, which Mr. Grimshawe has thought fit to preserve. They turn upon the general practice of wearing powder in the hair, and are a parody of Hamlet's soliloquy, Shall he wear powder, pomatum, or no?' At Cambridge he did not make such a figure in the examination list as was expected. He was neither wild nor idle, but he did not devote himself to the studies of the place. He was very fond of music, and had always a pianoforte in his room, a very unusual piece of furniture in an undergraduate's rooms in those days, and he played on the organ also. He belonged to an Harmonic Society, which performed glees and catches, and also to another social club, noted for its plain living and 6 high thinking. It was called the Red Herring Club from their fare, which consisted of a supper at each other's room which was limited to red herrings, bread, cheese, and beer. With some six or eight Trinity men young Richmond discussed philosophical subjects. He was what is called in our Universities a reading man; he did not however go into the senate-house to stand the final examination, owing to illhealth, and was allowed to take what is called in Cambridge an Aegrotat degree. This was in 1789, when Dr. Butler, master of Harrow School, and father of the present master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was senior wrangler, and Copley, afterwards Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, was second wrangler. The poet Wordsworth was then at St. John's College, but the two probably never met. Intellectually Wordsworth and the University were not in sympathy with each other. Legh Richmond's recollections of his Alma Mater' were more affectionate and reverential than those of Wordsworth. He liked his college, and was fond of its social life. After taking his degree Richmond was for some years collecting materials for a great work which he intended to publish on the theory as well as history of music. Some men whose names are enrolled with honour among the Fasti Cantabrigienses were Richmond's contemporaries, but his biographer does not record any of these among Richmond's friends. It was his father's wish that he should study for the bar, but his own desire was to take orders, preferring the church to the law. His father acquiesced in this his son's purpose, while his mother's 'secret wish and prayer had always been from my birth,' so he writes to his own children, that I might become a minister of God's word.' He was accordingly ordained deacon in the month of June, 1797, and proceeded to the degree of M.A. the beginning of July the same year. On the 22nd of the same month he was married to Mary, only daughter of James William Chambers, Esq., of Bath, immediately after which he proceeded to the Isle of Wight, and entered upon the curacies of the adjoining parishes of Brading and Yaverland on the 24th of July. It appears from the list of vicars of Brading, given in Mr. Adams's History of the Isle of Wight, that Miles Popple, the immediate predecessor of the late Mr. Dunbar Isidore Heath, of con |