Its Connection ivith the Past. 3 



able to make some comparisons, to carry with us, when we look 

 upon the valleys of the Seine and the Rhine, some impression 

 of our own landscapes and our own rivers some recollection of 

 our own cathedrals, when we stand by those of Milan and 

 Rouen. 



The New Forest is, perhaps, as good an example as could 

 be wished of what has been said of English scenery, and its 

 connection with our history. It remains after some eight 

 hundred years still the New Forest. True, its boundaries are 

 smaller, but the main features are the same as on the day 

 when first afforested by the Conqueror. The names of its woods 

 and streams and plains are the same. It is almost the last, 

 too, of the old forests with which England was formerly so 

 densely clothed. Charnwood is now without its trees : Wych- 

 wood is enclosed : the great Forest of Arden Shakspeare's 

 Arden is no more, and only a fragment of Sherwood has 

 been spared. But the New Forest still stands full of old 

 associations with, and memories of, the past. To the historian 

 it tells of the Forest Laws, and the death of one of the worst, 

 and the weakness of the most foolish, of English kings. To 

 the ecclesiologist it can show, close to it, the Priory Church 

 of Christchurch, with all its glories of Norman architecture, 

 built by the Red King's evil counsellor, Flambard ; and just 

 outside, too, its boundaries, the Conventual Church of Romsey, 

 with its lovely Romanesque triforium, in whose nunnery 

 Edith, beloved by the English, their " good Maud," " bea- 

 tissima regina," as the Chroniclers love to call her, was 

 educated. 



At its feet lies Southampton, with its Late Norman arcaded 

 town-wall, and gates, and God's House, with memories of Sir 

 Bevis and his wife Josyan the Brighte, and his horse Arundel 



B 2 



