The N<'ir Forest : itx History and its Scenery. 



Hospital loads the shore with all its costly ugliness. If we 

 have not, perhaps, yet reached the height of Continental pro- 

 fanity which has turned the Convent of Cordova into barracks, 

 and St. Bernard's Monastery at Clairvaux into a prison, and 

 the Church of Cluny into racing stables, we yet seeni to delight 

 to place side by side with the noblest conceptions that ever 

 rose in beauty from English ground, our modern abortions. 

 There is not a cathedral town whose minster-square is not dis- 

 graced by some pretentious shed. And now Government not 

 only invades the country, but chooses above all, the better 

 to display our folly, that place which the old Cistercian 

 monks had for ever made sacred by the loveliness of faith 

 and work. 



Hythe is only a little village, but as its name shows, once 

 the port of the New Forest.* The Forest, however, has now 

 receded from it, and in this chapter we shall see nothing of 

 its woods. The district, however, is too important in an his- 

 torical point of view to be omitted. The walk, even though 

 it is not over wild moors and commons, is still very beautiful. 

 True English lanes will lead us by quiet dells, with glimpses 

 here and there through hedgerow elms of the blue Southampton 

 water, down to the shore of the Solent. 



So, leaving Hythe f and going southward, skirting Cadlands 



* In the Rolls of Parliament, vol. i. p. 125, A.D. 1293, 21st Edward I., 

 is an account of a vessel, the All Saints, " de Hethe juxta Novam Forestam," 

 which, laden with wine from Rochelle, was wrecked and plundered on the 

 Cornish coast. 



f A little beyond Hythe is a good example of Mr. Kemble's test (see 

 the Saxons in England, vol. i., Appendix A, p. 48 1 ) for recognizing the Ancient 

 Mark. To the north lies Eling, the Mark of the Ealingas, and in regular 

 succession from it come the various hursts, holts,, and dens, now to be seen 

 in Ashurst, Buckholt, and Dibden. The last village has a very picturesque 



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