It
is to these Southampton looks to-day, south and east, as of old over
how many thousand miles of blue water.
CHAPTER XVIII
BEAULIEU AND CHRISTCHURCH
While I was in Southampton, I made up my mind to visit a place which I
had all my life desired to see, but which I had never yet set eyes
upon, I mean Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest. To this end I set out
early one morning, by steamboat, across Southampton Water, and landed
at Hythe, whence I had only to cross the eastern part of Beaulieu
Heath, a walk of some five miles, to find myself where I would be.
The day was fair, the tide at the flood; in the woods, across the
water, I could see where Netley Abbey, another Cistercian house,
younger than Beaulieu, once lifted up its voice in ceaseless praise of
God, the Maker of all that beauty in which it stood, scarcely spoiled
even now by the amazing energy of the modern world. It was then with a
light heart that I set out by a byway under Furze Down, and so across
the open heath, coming down at last through the woods to the ruins of
the abbey and the river of Beaulieu.
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