Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/21

Rh 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: Wychwood is enclosed: the great Forest of Arden—Shakspeare's Arden—is no more, and Sherwood is only known by the fame of Robin Hood. 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," "beatissima 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 3