We pulled up for some miles between thickly-wooded banks,--indeed, we were now passing through a part of the New Forest.  Suddenly the river took a bend, and we found ourselves off a village called Buckler's Hard. The river here expands considerably, and we saw two or three vessels at anchor.  In the last great war there was a dockyard here, where a number of frigates and other small men-of-war were built from the wood which the neighbouring forest produced.  Now, the dockyard turns out only a few coasting craft.  How different must have been the place when the sound of the shipwright's hammer was incessantly heard, to what it now is, resting in the most perfect tranquillity, as if everybody in the neighbourhood had gone to sleep!  No one was to be seen moving on shore, no one even on board the little coasters.  Not a bird disturbed the calm surface of the river.