keepers and the poachers thinning them mercilessly; while as many as 300 died, in one Forest walk, from starvation, in the winter of 1787. They were finally cleared off in 1851, the Crown taking, in lieu of feeding them, the right of planting 10,000 additional acres. Some deer, however, still wander through certain parts of the Forest, but not in large numbers, and a good many wild ones are found in Mid-Dorset, near Plush, and Buckland Newton, and a few, too, near Wimborne, at Lychett.

There are several ways of seeing the neighbourhood to advantage. The best, perhaps, is to take rooms at Brockenhurst or at Lyndhurst, in the very heart of the Forest; from both these places an active walker could penetrate into nearly every corner. Or a visitor could stay at Romsey, ten miles from Lyndhurst, and fourteen from Brockenhurst. This I have twice done, and in the bright sunny, dry weather of August and September long excursions can be made, and the Forest can be thoroughly explored. I passed September, 1875, and July, 1881, at Romsey, and found it a most charming residence, with abundant railway facilities, and its nearness to Hursley, Salisbury, and Southampton makes it convenient. In all these places, there is no dearth of accommodation. Romsey is only sixteen miles from Salisbury, ten miles from Winchester, and ten from the famous Church of St. Cross, and, morever, it has a grand and perfect Norman Abbey, of noble proportions and in magnificent preservation. Lyndhurst is the capital of the Forest, and one of the most prettily situated woodland towns in England. Its superb modern Church, completed thirty-five years ago, has a remarkable fresco by Sir F. Leighton. Ringwood, at whose Grammar School Stillingfleet was educated, is eleven miles from Rufus's Stone and close to Ellingham, the grave of Alicia Lisle; and, though more distant, it has some advantages, as it is easy to get to Bournemouth from it and to Christchurch Priory Church, and not difficult to reach Swanage, Dorchester, with its ancient camps and Roman Forum, and Weymouth. Wimborne, though farther off, is not inconvenient, and cheap return tickets are issued by all trains but one from May to October inclusive, to Lyndhurst-road, and Brockenhurst, and the distance to the latter, twenty miles, can be covered in little over half an hour. Besides its fine and unique Minster, and chain Library, Wimborne is near some very perfect camps; the most remarkable of these are Badbury Rings, and the Castle Hill, at Cranborne. Wimborne is remarkable for having all the books in its library chained not so many as at Hereford, but then at the latter some of the books are not chained. Fordingbridge, again, is not inconvenient, while even Lymington brings some parts of the Forest close.

The visitor must depend on an out-door life and long excursions for his chief pleasure, the Forest towns not being sufficiently large to satisfy the lover of busy centres of life and activity. In bad weather, rare fortunately from the beginning of May to the end of September, the district is extremely dreary, and the townsman will utter many complaints; still, if he visits the Forest for its seclusion and woodland scenery, he can surely dispense for a time with the excitement of cities and the din of busy populations.

As a rule the timber in the Forest is not remarkable for size, although the

Boldrewood oaks are handsome and of great bulk, and Mark Ash is noted for its magnificent beeches. The tree from which the arrow is said to have glanced that killed the Red King is long dead, but its site is marked by a stone, enclosed in an ugly triangular case, bearing on its three sides the following inscription :

"Here stood the oak tree on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell, glanced and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which he instantly died, on the second day of August, 1100. King William II., surnamed Rufus, being slain as before related, was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkiss, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and buried in the Cathedral Church of that city.

Anno, 1745.

That where an event so memorable had happened might not hereafter be unknown, this stone was set up by John, Lord Delewar, who had seen the tree growing in this place."

The continuity of English life is shown by the survival of Purkiss among local names. At Minestead, a village near Rufus's stone, it is still seen, and a shop is kept by a descendant of the ancient possessor of the name, while at Wimborne one of the principal booksellers kept until recently the old family name fresh and green, and other representatives of the family could easily be pointed out. Purchase, obviously a corruption of Purkiss, is a common name in southeast Dorset.

Brockenhurst Church was mentioned in Domesday Book. It is very interesting, as the following extract from the work on the Forest, published in 1862, by Mr. John R. Wise, will show; at the same time there is nothing remarkable in Brockenhurst and its Church :-"The approach to the Church remains in all its beauty. For a piec of quiet English scenery nothing can exceed it. A deep lane, its banks a garden of ferns, its hedges matted with honeysuckle, and woven together with long bryony, runs winding along a space of green to the lych-gate, guarded by an enormous oak, with a circumference of twenty-two feet eight inches, its limbs now fast decaying, its rough bark gray with the perpetual snow of lichens, and here and there burnished with soft streaks of russet-coloured moss, whilst behind it, in the Churchyard, spreads the gloom of a yew, which from the Conqueror's day to this hour has darkened the graves of generations."

The approach to the district from the Isle of Wight, and even from Bournemouth, can be conveniently made from Lymington, a quaint and rather handsome little watering place, not specially remarkable for size or situation, nor for its antiquities, but prettily situated, and at one time of much greater relative importance. It is necessary, however, to be on one's guard against local traditions, and not to accept without question exaggerated reports of departed grandeur :

"From the earliest times it evidently possessed the salt works, which so late as the beginning of the present century made the salt trade of Lymington second only to that of Liverpool, paying, as it did, a duty of £50,000 yearly upon the produce of its Salterns. The rock salt of the north, however, has driven

sea-made salt out of the market, but so long ago as 1147 Richard de Redvers, a descendant of one of the noble families of Normandy, confirmed to the Church and brethren of St. Mary at Quarr, in the Isle of Wight, the tithe which his father Baldwin had granted to them of the Lymington Salterns. In the reign of Edward III.—when it sounds quaint to modern ears to be told that Lymington contributed nearly double the number of ships and men sent by Portsmouth to that Monarch's fleet for the invasion of France-the borough was summoned to return representatives to Parliament, but none were returned till the twentyseventh year of Elizabeth's reign, and it is somewhat remarkable that from 1574 to 1834 the Burrard family held 46 mayoralties, and represented the borough in 30 Parliaments. They appear in fact to have been the Sultans of Lymington. It may interest the curious to know that the modern proposal to pay Members of Parliament is simply a revival of an old custom. In earlier times the officials of boroughs invited to send representatives to Westminster frequently made a return that no one could be found willing to undertake the duty. The archives of Southampton show that Thomas Reynolds, in 1st Henry VII., received for his "Parliament wages" from January 23rd to March 8th, £71 38. 4d., and at Christchurch, Sir Peter Mew, about the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, gave a bond, the condition of which was that he would not demand any pecuniary reward of the burgesses, nor put the borough to any expense on account of his services in Parliament. In 1677, to prevent animosities and other inconveniences, it was ordered by the Mayor and burgesses of Lymington that for the future the election of Mayor, as well as of Members of Parliament for the borough, should be by means of different coloured 'bullets,' to be placed by each burgess in a box for that purpose; but this order does not appear to have been acted upon, and was rescinded shortly afterwards."

It will startle the modern Radical to learn that that excellent institution, the ballot, with its immense advantages, was actually long ago proposed and perhaps tried at what he would regard as a very sleepy Hants borough.

Through all the vicissitudes of eight centuries the ancient Saxon Forest, the boundaries of which were extended by the pitiless Norman, has continued in its way to be one of the most beautiful parts of England. One landowner after another has seized upon broad belts of woodland, and large tracts of the Forest have, under one pretence or another, been cleared and cultivated; and Mr. Auberon Herbert is at this moment complaining that the resident officials are recklessly cutting down timber, and spoiling some of the loveliest parts of the little kingdom entrusted to their tender mercies. Small towns and villages have sprung up in the district, and some of the best kept and straightest roads in the kingdom run through that part of the country. Yet after all, for sylvan beauty, for calm repose, for accessibility, no other tract of equal extent, is so remarkable. Change there has been, but less than one would expect, and portions of the Forest remain as they were four or five centuries ago. In the New Forest the England of the Middle Ages still reigns supreme.

The New Forest is said to be singularly rich in animal and vegetable life, but such claims are so generally made everywhere that they cannot always be

accepted without demur, and to the best of my knowledge it is doubtful if they have much to rest upon as far as the New Forest is concerned. Seventeen kinds of bronzed and green ferns grow in the forest, and 72 species of birds are resident in the district, while at least 230 of the 354 British species have been found in it. The insect life of the district is rich and varied, and the vegetation is in some places luxuriant, while in others little except gorse, heather, and poor grass flourishes. Taking it as a whole, the Forest is not fertile, though in the river bottoins there are patches of rich land, which, partly from natural advantages and partly from loving care, have an air of fertility and beauty in marked contrast to other parts.

How can I describe this lovely district? Persons, ignorant that forests are not necessarily covered in all their extent with tangled old trees, fancy that as soon as they enter the New Forest they see on all sides vast tracts of woodland, and nothing but woodland. Never was there a greater mistake. Thousands of acres, as I have said above, are covered with majestic timber, and still larger tracts with recently-planted trees, but there are also still more extensive heaths. The charm of the New Forest is, next to its extent, its variety. The heather is so thick, tangled, and tall, that during the late summer, when it is literally one mass of flowers, the Forest is more attractive than the most carefully kept garden, and I know nothing equal to it for wild, unapproachable loveliness. The dry, indeed arid, soil of much of the district seems, in conjunction with the bright sunshine, to suit garden flowers particularly well, and their abundance and variety are difficult to surpass elsewhere in England. So with the older woodsit is their beauty and extent that delight. The timber may not always be as large as one could wish, though hundreds of acres are densely wooded, and carry trees fully satisfying the connoisseur. So with the young plantations, their extent makes them remarkable. Persons who often stroll through large woods and plantations, and are keenly alive to the beauties of woodland scenery, feel how little they have entered into the charm of a vast forest until they wander for hours in the New Forest. Nothing resembling it exists in any other part of England, and nothing like it could now be made, while under the most favourable conditions it would take two or three centuries to produce such a forest. The mildness of the climate has something to do with the luxuriance of the heather and gorse, and with the beauty of the scenery, which is equal to anything in the South of England, though falling short of the romantic glens of Derbyshire, and the rich verdure of Brecon and Hereford. The New Forest is on the whole flat, though not painfully so, or, rather, its surface is slightly undulating, with here and there hills of low elevation, one of the prettiest of these ridges being near Romsey and Broadlands.

One of the most charming excursions from Brockenhurst is to the noble ruins of Beaulieu Abbey. For nearly three miles the road winds among trees, and it then passes for a couple more over Beaulieu Heath, and finally gradually descends for a mile into the village, and on passing through the latter, to the left, the handsome house of Lord Montagu is seen; while a little to the right, over the river Exe, stands the parish Church, a vast building 150 feet long, once the

refectory of the ancient Abbey.

The Church is beautifully and reverently kept, and is remarkable for its superb pulpit, and for a covered arcaded passage in the wall leading to it. This so-called pulpit was the rostrum of the refectory, in the days when the Abbey was in its glory, and the Reader occupied it at dinner. It

is said that only one or two others of equal beauty and interest remain. One of these is at Frampton, near Dorchester. Near the Church extend for a vast distance the ruins of one of the grandest abbeys ever founded in this land, and no ruins are more exquisitely situated. The Church was only seven feet shorter than Winchester Cathedral. Well was the spot named Beaulieu.

An uneasy feeling has taken possession of the public mind that the Forest is in danger of being enclosed, or felled, or destroyed. Attempts have been made to establish absolute lordship over parts of it, and though there is little immediate danger of destructive change no one knows what form these claims, inquiries, and investigations may any day assume. The best guarantee for the preservation of the Forest is that so large a proportion of the area known as the New Forest is covered with such very young timber that it would not be worth while to stock it up, and nothing of the kind is likely to be attempted for years. The older timber might, it is true, be cut down and the beauty of the scenery destroyed for a century or more-assuming that the removal of the better grown timber would not be the first step towards the cultivation of the land on which it grew. Fears for the New Forest may have been unnecessarily aroused, and there may be little immediate prospect of destructive change, but the time must not be allowed to slip before it is too late to assert the claim of the nation to what remains of the Forest. No one could otherwise tell when the loveliest woods in the South of England still open to the public might be closed against visitors, and converted into private property, and no one knows when the most charming woodland scenery, the most beautiful heaths the eye could rest upon, may be spoilt by the hand of man and his so-called improvements. Timber of comparatively small size is constantly being cut, both on Crown lands and on the estates of local magnates, and as long as this thinning is not carried too far, no fault need be found; indeed it is a positive advantage to keep trees from being too thick. But in wandering through the New Forest, it has often pained me to see hundreds of trees lying in all directions. The excuse is that it is necessary to thin the timber. All I know is that, with the exception of some portions, large tracts of woodland are so sparingly covered with timber that on hot days there is hardly any shade. Nothing is easier than to cut down a few thousand young trees and to thin a wood, but it takes twenty years before those remaining grow sufficiently to fill the large gaps made in all directions. So little old timber remains in this country that we must regard with grave suspicion all attempts to remove fine young trees that might some day take the place of the Forest giants whose growth has needed centuries.

If what I have said of the importance of preserving the New Forest in its present state, on account of its charming scenery, historical associations, and advantages as a health resort, is not satisfactory to zealous advocates of economy, who fancy that every foot of waste land should be used to grow food for our vast