3-021-700 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Volunteer Review at Portsmouth: the 1st Middlesex Artillery passing through Cosham on Good Friday, 1868. '...the field batteries...marched down from head-quarters by road...About 2.30 p.m. the leading gun of the batteries was seen from the village of Cosham crossing the top of Portsdown by the old London road...In the remainder of the march of the Middlesex to Portsmouth they were accompanied by a vast crowd. All Portsmouth, Southsea, Portsea, and Landport appeared to have turned out to do honour to the strangers, and the four miles and a half of road between Portsdown and Southsea-common was as much thronged with pedestrians and vehicles of every kind as the read between London and Epsom Downs on the Derby Day. The guns of the Middlesex Artillery were admirably horsed, all the appointments being evidently in first-rate order; and men, horses, and guns, although covered with dust, looked soldierly and service-like...Every house along the Cambridge-road hung out banners and streamers inscribed with words of welcome to the volunteers, whom the Portsmouth people, in all sorts of festive devices, hailed, together with the Army and Navy, as "England's Defenders".' From "Illustrated London News", 1868.