224 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



uniformity of ugliness most admirably keeps down any symptoms 

 of the prodigal luxuriance of beauty.* 



We must, however, carefully beware of founding any theory, 

 from the existence of these potteries, that the Forest must there- 

 fore have been cultivated in the days of the Conqueror. The 

 reason why the Romans chose the Forest is obvious, — not from 

 its fertility, but because it supplied the wood to fire the kilns ; 

 the same cause which, centuries after, made Yarranton select 

 Ringwood for his smelting-furnaces. We must, too, bear in 

 mind that after the Romans abandoned the island the natives 

 soon went back to their primitive state of semi-barbarism ; 

 and further, that the interval between the Roman occupa- 

 tion and the Norman Conquest was nearly as great as that 

 between ourselves and the Conqueror — a period long enough 

 for the Kelts, and West-Saxons, and Danes to have swept away 

 in their feuds all traces of civilization. 



But what we should see in them is that beauty of form, 

 which in simple outline has seldom been excelled, proclaiming 

 a people who should in their descendants be the future masters 

 of Art, as then they were of warfare. 



The history of a nation may be more plainly read by 

 its manufactures than by its laws or constitution. Its true 

 aesthetic life, too, should be determined not so much by its list 



* In Archaologia, vol. xxxv. p. 99, Mr. Akerman has given a series 

 of patterns, which show the variety of designs according to the fancy 

 of each workman. The pattern on the right-hand side of our second 

 ilkistration at p. 223 is used as a border in the toga of the later Roman 

 empire The height of the wine vessel at p. 214 is seven inches and a half; 

 of the oil-flask at p. 225, five inches; of the largest drinkmg cup, five 

 inches ; and the smallest, three inches and three-quarters ; the jar, two 

 inches. 



