And Lyndhurst is as pretty a village as one could wish to see. It is the metropolis of the New Forest, if that portentous word is not too big to apply to this little gem of a place. Here come all them that would make a thorough exploration of the leafy alleys and dim recesses of these woodlands, and as it chances that the democratic taste inclines rather to the fearful joys of Ramsgate or Margate than to forest scenery, Lyndhurst wears an air aristocratic and exclusive, and its visitors are eminently “nice.” True, we saw a brakeful of bean-feasters pledging one another (the ladies as deep-drinking as the men) in pewter tankards outside the Crown Hotel, but if one swallow doesn’t make a summer, surely it must be allowed that one bean-feast does not convert Lyndhurst into a semblance of Rye House and Broxbourne. [Illustration: LYNDHURST.] Lyndhurst, then, exists for the moneyed visitor, and is a model of neatness and propriety. Round about it, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mansions nestle amid thick bowers. In the centre of the village rises the tall, obtuse-pointed spire of the modern red-brick church, set conspicuously on its high mound, and below, to emphasise the eternal propinquity of Beer and Bible, stands the Crown Hotel and Tap. But the most picturesque grouping of these different estates is where the church spire rises high above the roof of the “Fox and Hounds,” as I have here endeavoured to show. Three and a half miles down the road is Brockenhurst, a pretty place--I know it well--but this afternoon broken out into a rash of flags and flaunting bannerets in primary colours, and swarming with excursionists, who celebrated some occasion connected with a Widow and Orphan Society. These we soon left behind, crossing the railway, and so into the country again. The London and South-Western Railway spells the place Brokenhurst, reckless of the philology of the name. “Brock” is Anglo-Saxon for badger, and in the same way “hurst” stands for “wood”; thus with the plural “brocken,” Badgers’ Wood stands revealed. But philology and the bygone natural history of places are nothing to railway companies. [Illustration: A FORD IN THE NEW FOREST.] In the hot glare of noonday we came through a heathy land to a sandy ford where a stream, the Avon Water, rippled across the road, and a crazy footbridge spanned the current. Brilliant lepidoptera floated lazily in the air, blundering humble bees boomed in many cadences, and the Avon sang a happy song among the grasses and the slight timbers of the bridge; I wish I knew the secret of its joy. XVII.