 Chapter 1 of Highways and Byways in Sussex Preface Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series will not need to be told that they are less guidebooks than appreciations of the districts with which they are concerned. In the pages that follow, my aim has been to gather a Sussex bouquet, rather than to present the facts which the more practical traveller requires. The order of progress through the country has been determined largely by the lines of railway. I have thought it best to enter Sussex in the west at Midhurst, making that the first centre, and to zigzag thence across to the east by way of Chichester, Arendl, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton—I name only the chief centres—Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewis, Eastbourne, Halesham, Hastings, Rye, and Tundbridge Wells, leaving the county finally at Wytham, on the borders of Ashdown Forest. For the traveller in a carriage or on a bicycle, this route is not the best. But for those who would explore it slowly on foot, and much of the more characteristic scenery of Sussex can be studied only in this way, with occasional assistance from the train, it is, I think, as good a scheme as any. I do not suggest that it is necessary for the reader who travels through Sussex to take the same route. He would probably prefer to cover the county, literally strip by strip, the forest strip from Tundbridge Wells to Horsham, the wheeled strip from Billingshurst to Burrwash, the down's strip from Rackton to Beechey Head, rather than follow my course north to south and south to north across the land. But the book is, I think, the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, for they bring him again and again back to the downs. It is impossible at this date to write about Sussex in accordance with the plan of the present series, without saying a great many things that others have said before, and without making use of the historians of the county. To the collections of the Sussex Archaeological Society I am greatly indebted, also to Mr J. G. Bishop's peep into the past, and to Mr W. D. Parish's dictionary of the Sussex dialect, many other works are mentioned in the text. The history, archaeology, and natural history of the county have been thoroughly treated by various writers, but there are, I have noticed, fewer books than there should be, upon Sussex men and women. Carl Isles saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish, which one might amend to the history of his parishioners, has borne too little fruit in our district, nor have lay observers arisen in any number to atone for the shortcoming, and yet Sussex must be as rich in good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous, or noble as any other division of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex men and women, the late Mark Anthony Lauer played his part with the worthys of Sussex, and Mr Fleet with glimpses of our Sussex ancestors, but the Sussex characters, where they, who has set down their little unremembered acts, their eccentricities, their sterling southern tenacities. The Reverend A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harding, and quite recently, the Reverend C. N. Sutton has published his interesting historical notes of William, Hartfield, and Ashdowne Forest, and there may be other similar parish histories which I am forgetting, but the only books that I have seen which make a patient and sympathetic attempt to understand the people of Sussex are Mr Parrish's Dictionary, Mr Egerton's Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways, and John Halsham's Idolhurst. How many rare qualities of head and heart must go unrecorded in rural England? I have to thank my friend, Mr C. E. Clayton, for his kindness in reading the proofs of this book, and in suggesting editions, E. V. L. Readers' Note A list of the fourteen one-inch ordnance maps of Sussex is omitted at this point. End Readers' Note Chapter 1 Midhurst If it is better in exploring a county to begin with its least interesting districts and to end with the best, I have made a mistake in the order of this book. I should rather have begun with the comparatively dull, hot inland hilly region of the North East, and have left it at the cool chalk downs of the Hampshire border. But if one's first impression of new country cannot be too favourable, we have done rightly in starting at Midhurst, even at the risk of a loss of enthusiasm in the concluding chapters. For although historically, socially, and architecturally, North Sussex is as interesting as South Sussex, the crown of the county's scenery is the downs, and its most fascinating districts are those which the downs dominate. The further we travel from the downs and the sea, the less unique are our surroundings. Many of the villages in the Northern Weald, beautiful as they are, might equally well be in Kent or Surrey. A visitor suddenly alighting in their midst, say, from a balloon, would be puzzled to name the county he was in. But the downs, and their dependencies, are essential Sussex. Hence a Sussex man in love with the downs becomes less happy at every step northward. One cause of the unique character of the Sussex downs is their virginal security, their unassailable independence. They stand a silent, undiscovered country between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain, and the trim estates of the Weald, Londoners for whom Sussex has a special attraction by reason of its proximity. Note Brighton's Beach is the nearest to the capital in point of time, and note, either pause north of the downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles, or in carriages to the sea. Houses, there are among the downs, it is true, but they are old established. The homes of families that can remember no other homes. There is as yet no fashion for residences in these altitudes. Until that fashion sets in, and may it be far distant, the downs will remain essential Sussex, and those that love them will exclaim with Mr Kipling. God gave all men all earth to love, but since man's heart is small, ordains for each, one spot shall prove beloved over all. Each to his choice, and I rejoice the lot has fallen to me in a fair ground, in a fair ground, yea, Sussex by the sea. If we are to begin our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer. A quiet country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernized and unambitious, with a river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and the downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system, which having only a single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, never annoys him by disfiguring the country, or letting loose upon it crowds of vandals. Single lines always mean thinly populated country. As a pedestrian poet has sung, my heart leaps up when I behold the single railway line, for then I know the wood and walled are almost wholly mine. And Midhurst, being on no great high road, is nearly always quiet. Nothing ever hurries there. The people live their own lives, passing along their few narrow streets, and the one broad one, under the projecting eaves of timbered houses, unwrecking of London and the world. Sussex has no more contented town. The church, which belongs really to St Mary Magdalene, but is popularly credited to St Dennis, was never very interesting, but is less so now that the Montague tomb has been moved to Eastbourne. Twenty years ago, I remember, was rumoured to harbour a pig-faced lady. I never had sight of her, but as to her existence and her cast of feature, no one was in the least doubt. Pig-faced ladies, once so common, seem to have gone out, just as the day of Springheeled Jack is over. Sussex once had her Springheeled Jacks too, in some profusion. Cowdery Park is gained from the High Street, just below the Angel Inn, by a causeway through water meadows of the Rother. The house is now but a shell, never having been rebuilt since the fire which ate out its heart in 1793. Yet a beautiful shell, heavily draped in rich green ivy, that before very long must, here and there, forget its early duty of supporting the walls, and thrust them too far from the perpendicular to stand. Cowdery, built in the reign of Henry VIII, did not come to its full glory, until Sir Anthony Brown, afterwards First Viscount Montague, took possession. The seal was put upon its fame by the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1591. Note, Edward VI had been banqueted there by Sir Anthony in 1552. Marvelously, nay, rather excessively, as he wrote, end note. The seal was put upon its fame by the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1591, as some return for the loyalty of her host, who, although an old man in 1588 on the approach of the Armada, had ridden straightway to Tilbury with his sons and his grandson, the first to lay the service of his house at Her Majesty's feet. A rare pamphlet is still preserved, describing the festivities during Queen Elizabeth's sojourn. On Saturday, about eight o'clock, Her Majesty reached the house, travelling from Farnham, where she had dined. Upon sight of her loud music sounded, it stopped when she set foot upon the bridge, and a real man standing between two wooden dummies, whom he exactly resembled, began to flatter her exceedingly. Until she came, he said, the walls shook and the roof tottered, but one glance from her eyes had steadied the turret for ever. He went on to call her virtue immortal, and herself the miracle of time, nature's glory, fortune's empress, and the world's wonder. Elizabeth, when he had made an end, took the key from him, and embraced Lady Montague and her daughter, the Lady Dormier, whereupon the mistress of the house, as it were weeping in the bosom, said, O happy time, O joyful day! These preliminaries over, the fun began. At breakfast, next morning, three oxen and a hundred and forty geese were devoured. On Monday, August the 17th, Elizabeth rode to her bower in the park, took a crossbow from a nymph who sang a sweet song, and with it shot three or four deer, carefully brought within range. After dinner, standing on one of the turrets, she watched sixteen bucks pulled down with greyhounds in a lawn. On Tuesday the queen was approached by a pilgrim, who first called her fairest of all creatures, and expressed the wish that the world might end with her life, and then led her to an oak, whereon were hanging escutcheons of her majesty, and all the neighbouring noblemen and gentlemen. As she looked, a wild man, clad all in ivy, appeared, and delivered an address on the importance of loyalty. On Wednesday the queen was taken to a goodly fish pond, now a meadow, where there was an angler. After some words from him, a band of fishermen approached, drawing their nets after them, whereupon the angler, turning to her majesty, remarked that her virtue made envy blush and stand amazed. Having thus spoken, the net was drawn, and found to be full of fish which were laid at Elizabeth's feet. The entry for this day ends with the sentence, That evening she hunted. On Thursday the lords and ladies dined at a table forty-eight yards long, and there was a country dance with table and pipe, which drew from her majesty gentle applause. On Friday the queen knighted six gentlemen, and passed on to Chichester. A year later the first Lord Montague died. He was succeeded by another Antony, the author of the Book of Orders and Rules, for the use of the family at Cowdery, and the dedicati of Antony Copley's Fig for Fortune, 1596. Copley has a certain Sussex interest of his own, having astonished, not a little, the good people of Horsham. A contemporary letter describes him as the most desperate youth that liveth. He did shoot at a gentleman last summer, and did kill an ox with a musket, and in Horsham Church he threw his dagger at the parish clerk, and it stuck in a seat of the church. There liveth not his like in England for sudden attempts. Subsequently the conspirator poet must have calmed down, for he states in the dedication to my lord that he is now winnowed by the fan of grace and Zionry. Today he would say, saved. Copley, after narrowly escaping capital punishment, for his share in a Jesuit plot, disappeared. The instructions given in Lord Montague's Book of Orders and Rules illustrate very vividly the generous amplitude of the old Cowdery establishment. Thus, my carver and his office, I will let my carver, when he cometh to the Uri board, do their washer together with the sewer, and that done be armed, vedelt, with an arming a towel cast about his neck, and put under his girdle on both sides, and one napkin on his left shoulder, and another on the same arm, and thence being brought by my gentleman Usher to my table, with two courtesies there too, the one about the midst of the chamber, the other when he cometh to it, that he do stand seemly and decently with due reverence and silence, until my diet and fear be brought up, and then do his office, and when any meat is to be broken up, that he do carry it to a side table, which shall be prepared for that purpose, and there do it. When he hath taken up the table, and delivered the voider to the Yeoman Usher, he shall do reverence, and return to the Uri board, there to be unarmed. My will is that for that day he have the precedence, and place, next to my gentleman Usher at the waiter's table. My gentleman waiters, I will that some of my gentleman waiters harken when I or my wife at any time do walk abroad, that they may be ready to give their attendance upon us, some at one time, and some at another, as they shall agree amongst themselves. But when strangers are in place, then I will that in any sort they be ready to do such service for them as the gentleman Usher shall direct. I will further that they be daily present in the great chamber or other place of my diet, about ten of the clock in the forenoon and five in the afternoon, without fail, for performance of my service, unless they have license from my steward or gentleman Usher, to the contrary, which if they exceed I will that they make known the cause thereof to my stewards, who shall acquaint me therewith all. I will that they dine and sup at a table appointed for them, and there take place next after the gentleman of my horse and chamber, according to their seniorities in my service. The third Viscount Montague was not remarkable, but his account books are quaint reading. From July 1657 to July 1658 his steward spent 1,945 pounds, ten shillings, solely in little personal matters for his master. Among the disbursements were, on September the 11th, 14 pence for washing Will Stapler, on November the 22nd, on shilling and forpence, to the Lewis Carrier, for bringing a box of puddings for my mistress and my master, on January the 17th, four pounds, to Mr. Fisk the Dancing Master, for teaching my master to dance, being two months, and on April the 21st, seven shillings, for a tooth for my lord. The fifth Viscount was a man of violent temper, on reaching Mass one day and finding it half done, he drew his pistol and shot the chaplain. The outcry all over the country was loud and vengeful, and my lord lay concealed for fifteen years, in a hiding-hole contrived in the masonry of Cowdery for the shelter of persecuted priests. The peer emerged only at night, when he roamed the close walks, repentant and sad. Lady Montague would then steal out to him, dressing all in white, to such good purpose, that the desired rumors of a ghost soon flew about the neighbourhood. The Curse of Cowdery, which, if genuinely pronounced, has certainly been wonderfully fulfilled, dates from the gift of Battle Abbey by Henry VIII to Sir Anthony Brown, the father of Queen Elizabeth's host and friend. Sir Anthony seized his new property, and turned the monks out of the gates, in 1538. Legend says that as the last monk departed, he warned his dispoiler, that by fire and water his line should perish. By fire and water it perished, indeed. A week after Cowdery House was burned in 1793, the last Viscount Montague was drowned in the Rhine. His only sister, the wife of Mr Stephen Points, who inherited, was the mother of two sons, both of whom were drowned while bathing at Bogner. When Mr Points sold the estate to the Earl of Egmont, we may suppose the Curse to have been withdrawn. Among the treasures that were destroyed in the fire were the roll of Battle Abbey and many paintings. Dr Johnson visited Cowdery a few years before its demolition. Sir, he said to Boswell, I should like to stay here for and twenty hours. We see here how our ancestors lived. According to the Tour of Great Britain, attributed to Daniel Defoe, but probably by another hand, Cowdery's Hall was of Irish oak. In the large parlour were the triumphs of Henry VIII by Holbein. In the long gallery were the twelve apostles, as large as life. While the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, a tableau that never failed to please our ancestors, was not wanting. The glory of the Montagues has utterly passed. The present Earl of Egmont is either an absentee, or he lives in a cottage near the gates, and the new house which is hidden in trees is of no interest. The park, however, is still ranged by its beautiful deer, and still possesses an avenue of chestnut trees and rolling wastes of turf. It is everywhere, as free as a heath. 2. Midhurst's Villages The road from Midhurst to Blackdown ascends steadily to Henley, threading vast woods and preserves. On the left is a great common on the right, North Heath, where the two druids were hanged in chains after being executed at Horsham in 1799, for the robbery of the Portsmouth Mail, probably the last instance of hanging in chains in this country. For those that like wild forest country, there was once no better rannable than might be enjoyed here. But now, 1903, that the king's new sanatorium is being built in the midst of great common, some of the wildness must necessarily be lost. A finer site could not have been found. Above Great Common is a superb open space, nearly 600 feet high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one studies the Fernhurst Valley, the Hazelmere Heights, and, blue in the distance, the North Downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the country we are now in. A few minutes walk to the east from this lofty common, and we are immediately above Henley, clinging to the hillside, an almost alpine hamlet. Henley, however, no longer sees the travellers that once it did, for the coach road which, of old, climbed perilously through it, has been diverted in a curve through the hangar, and now sweeps into Fernhurst by way of Henley Common. Fernhurst, beautifully named, is in an exquisite situation among the minor eminences of the Hazelmere Range, but the builder has been busy here, and the village is not what it was. Two miles to the northwest on the way to Lynchmere, immediately under the green heights of Marley, is the old house which once was shulbred priory. As it is now in private occupation, and is not shown to strangers, I have not seen it, but of old, many persons journeyed thither, attracted by the quaint mural paintings in the priors' room, of domestic animals uttering speech. Christus natus est, crows the cock. Quando, quando, the duck inquires. In hack, nocte, says the raven. Ubi, ubi, asks the cow, and the lamb satisfies her. Bethlehem, Bethlehem! One may return deviously from shulbred to midhurst. Passing in the heart of an unpopulated country, a hamlet called Miland, where is an old curiosity-shop of varied resources, by way of one of the pleasantest and narrowest lanes that I know, rising and falling from miles through silent woods, coming at last to Chithurst Church, one of the smallest and simplest and least accessible in the county, and reaching midhurst again by the hard, dry, and irreproachable road that runs between the heather of Trot and Common. On the eastern side of Fernhurst, to which we may now return, a mile on the way to Lurgershaw, was once verdly castle, but it is now a castle no more merely a ruined heap. Utilitarianism was too much for it, and its stones fell to Macadam. After all, if an old castle has to go, there are few better forms of reincarnation for it than a good hard road. While at Fernhurst it is well to walk on to Blackdown, the best way perhaps being to take the lane to the right, about half a mile beyond the village, and make for the hill across country, Blackdown whose blackness is from its heather and its furs frowns before one all the while. The climb to the summit is toilsome, over 900 feet, but well worth the effort for the hill overlooks hundreds of square miles of Sussex and Surrey, between Leith Hill in the north and Chanktonbury in the south. Oldworth, Tennyson's house, is on the northeast slope facing Surrey. The poet laid the foundation stone on April the 23rd, Shakespeare's birthday, 1868. The inscription on the stone running, Prosper thou the work of our hands, O prosper thou our handiwork. Of the site, Aubry de Veer wrote, It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well. See it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by the inviolate sea. Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the most noted of their time. Pilgrims from all parts journeyed thither, not too welcome. Among them that devout American, who had worked his way across the Atlantic in order to recite Maude to its author, a recitation from which says the present Lord Tennyson, his father, suffered. Tennyson has, I think, no poems upon his Sussex home, but I always imagine that the dedication of the death of Eni and other poems in 1894 must belong to Blackdam, there on the top of the down, the wild heather round me, and over me, dunes high blue. When I looked at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown, I thought to myself, I would offer this book to you, this and my love together, to you that are seventy-seven, with a faith as clear as the heights of the dune blue heaven, and a fancy as summer new as the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather. The most interesting village between Midhurst and the western boundary, due west, is Trotten, three miles distant on the superb road to Petersfield, of which I have spoken above. There is no better road in England. Trotten is quiet and modest, but it has two great claims on lovers of the English drama. In the ode to pity of one of our Sussex poets we read thus of another, but wherefore need I wander wide to all delicious distant side, deserted streams and mute? Wild Aaron, too, has heard thy strains and echo midst thy native plains, being soothed by pity's loot. There first the Wren, thy myrtles shed on gentlest Ottway's infant head, to him thy cell was shown, and while he sung the female heart, with youth's soft notes unspoiled by art, thy turtles mixed their own. So wrote William Collins, adding in a note that the Aaron, more properly the Rother, a tributary of the Aaron, runs by the village of Trotten in Sussex, where Thomas Ottway had his birth. The unhappy author of Venice Preserved and The Orphan was born at Trotten in 1652, the son of Humphrey Ottway the Curit, who afterwards became rector of wool-beading, close by. Ottway died miserably when only thirty-three, partly of starvation, partly of a broken heart at the unresponsiveness of Mrs. Barry, the actress whom he loved, but who preferred the Earl of Rochester. His two best plays, although they are no longer acted, lived for many years, providing, in Belvedere, in Venice Preserved, and Minimia in The Orphan, in which he sung the female heart, congenial roles for tragic actresses, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Sibber, Mrs. Siddons, and Mrs. O'Neill. Ottway was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes, but a tablet to his fame is in Trotten Church, which is of unusual plainness, not unlike an ecclesiastical barn. Here also is the earliest known brass to a woman, Margaret de Camois, who lived about thirteen hundred. The transition is easy at Trotten, from Ottway to Shakespeare, from Venice Preserved to Henry IV, Hotspur to Lady Percy. Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap. Lady P, go, you giddy goose! Note the music plays, end note, Hotspur. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh, and it is no marvel he's so humorous. By a lady he's a good musician. Lady P, then should you be nothing but musical, for you are altogether governed by humours. Nice still, you thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh. Hotspur, I had rather hear, Lady, my brach howl in Irish. Lady P, wouldst have thou head broken? Hotspur, no. Lady P, then be still. Hotspur, neither, it is a woman's fault. Lady P, now God help thee. Hotspur, to the Welsh lady's bed. Lady P, what's that? Hotspur, peace, she sings. Note a Welsh song sung by Lady Mortimer, end note. Hotspur, come, Kate, I'll have your song, too. Lady P, not mine in good sooth. Hotspur, not yours in good sooth. Heart, you swear like a comfort-maker's wife. Not you in good sooth, and as true as I live, and as God shall mend me, and as sure as day, and give such sarsenate surety for thy oaths, as if thou never walkst further than Finsbury. Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, a good mouth-filling oath, and leave in sooth and such protest of pepper gingerbread to velvet guards and Sunday citizens. Come, sing. Lady P, I will not sing. Hotspur, it is the next way to turn tailor, or be red-breasted teacher, as the indentures be drawn aisle away within these two hours, and so come in when you will. Note exit, end note. My excuse for introducing this little scene is that Kate, whose real name was Elizabeth, lies here. Her tomb is in the chancel, where she reposes beside her second husband Thomas, Lord Camoise, beneath a slab on which are presentments in brass of herself and her lord. It was this Lord Camoise who rebuilt Trotton's church, about fourteen hundred, and who also gave the village its beautiful bridge over the Rother, at a cost it used to be said, of only a few pence less than that of the church. Trotton has still other literary claims. At Trotton Place lived Arthur Edward Knox, whose Ornithological Rambles in Sussex, published in 1849, is one of the few books worthy to stand beside White's natural history of Selborne. In Sussex, as elsewhere, the Fowler has prevailed, and although rare birds are still occasionally to be seen, they now visit the country only by accident, and leave it as soon as may be, thankful to have a whole skin. Guns were active enough in Knox's time, but to read his book today is to be translated to a new land. From time to time I shall borrow from Mr Knox's pages. Here I may quote a short passage which refers at once to his home and to his attitude to those creatures whom he loved to study and studied to love. I have the satisfaction of exercising the rights of hospitality towards a pair of barn owls, which have for some time taken up their quarters in one of the attic roofs of the ancient ivy-covered house in which I reside. I delight in listening to the prolonged snoring of the young when I ascend the old oak stairs to the neighbourhood of their nursery, and in hearing the shriek of the parent birds on the calm summer nights, as they pass to and fro near my window, for it assures me that they are still safe, and as I know that at least a qualified protection is afforded them elsewhere, and that even their arch enemy, the gamekeeper, is beginning reluctantly but gradually to acquiesce in the general belief of their innocence and utility, I cannot help indulging the hope that this bird will eventually meet with that general encouragement and protection to which its eminent services so richly entitle it. One more literary association. It was at Trotten that William Cobbett looked at the square. From Rogate we came on to Trotten where a Mr Twyford is the squire, and where there is a very fine and ancient church close by the squire's house. I saw the squire looking at some poor devils who were making worst improvements, ma'am, on the road which passes by the squire's door. He looked uncommonly hard at me. It was a scrutinising sort of look mixed, as I thought, with a little surprise, if not of jealousy, as much as to say, I wonder who the devil you can be. My look at the squire was with the head a little on one side, and with the cheek drawn up from the left corner of the mouth, expressive of anything rather than a sense of inferiority to the squire, of whom, however, I had never heard speak before. By passing on to Rogate, whose fine church not long since was restored too freely, and turning due south we come to what is perhaps the most satisfying village in all Sussex, South Harding. Cool and spacious and retired, it lies under the downs, with a little subsidiary range of its own to shelter it also from the west. Three inns are ready to refresh the traveller, the ship, the white heart, a favourite Sussex sign, and the coach and horses, with a new signboard of dazzling freshness. The surrounding country is good. Peter's Field and Midhurst are less than an hour's drive distant, while the village has one of the most charming churches in Sussex, both without and within. Unlike most of the county's spires, South Harding's is slate and red shingle, but the slate is of an agreeable green hue, resembling old copper. Perhaps it is copper. The roof is of red tiles mellowed by weather, and the south side of the tower is tiled too, imparting an unusual suggestion of warmth, more of comfort to the structure, while on the east wall of the chancel is a Virginian creeper, which as autumn advances emphasises this effect. Within the church's winning too, with its ample arches, perfect proportions, and that aesthetic satisfaction that often attends the cruciform shape, an interesting monument of the cowper and coals families is preserved in the south transept, three full-sized coloured figures. In the north transept is a spiral staircase leading to the tower, and elsewhere are memorials of the fords and fan shores of Up Park, a superb domain over the brow of Harding's Down, and of the carols of Lady Holt, of whom we shall see more directly. The east window is a peculiarly cheerful one, and the door of South Harding Church is kept open, as every church door should be, but as too many in Sussex are not. In the churchyard, beneath a shed, are the remains of two tombs with recumbent stone figures, now in a fragmentary state. At the church gates are the old village stocks. Harding has a place in literature, for one of the carols was Pope's friend John 1666 to 1736, a nephew of the diplomatist and dramatist. Pope's carol, who suggested the rape of the lock, lived at Lady Holt at West Harding, long destroyed, and also at West Grinstead, where, as we shall see, the poem was largely written. Mr. H. D. Gordon, rector of Harding for many years, wrote a history of his parish in 1877, a very interesting gossipy book, where we may read much of the carol family, including passages from their letters, how Lady Mary carol had the kind impulse to take one of the parson's nine daughters to France to educate and befriend, but was so thoughtless as to transform into a pretty papist. How Lady Mary disliked Mrs. Jones, the steward's wife, and many other matters. I quote a passage from a letter of Lady Mary's about Mrs. Jones, showing that human nature was not then greatly different from what it is today. Mr. Jones and his fine madam came down two days before your birthday, and expected to lie in the house, but as I apprehended the consequences of letting them begin so, I made an excuse for want of rooms by expecting company, and sent them to Gould's. Note Arthur Gould married Kate Carrol, and lived at Harding Place. End note, where they stayed two nights, I invited them the next day to dinner, and they came but the day following Madam Huffed, I believe, for she went away to Barnards, and would not so much as see the desert. Dessert. However, I don't repent it. He has been here at all the merriment, and I believe you'll find it better to keep them at a civil distance than other ways, for she seems a high dame, and not very good-humoured, for she has been sick ever since of the Mule Grooves. Mrs. Jones, soon afterwards, succumbed either to the Mule Grooves or a worse visitation. Lady Mary, thus, broke the news. Mr. Jones's wife died on Sunday, just as she lived, an independent, and would have no parson with her, because, she said, she could pray as well as they. He is making a great funeral, but I believe not in much affection, for he was all night at a merry bout, two days before she died. On the arrival of the young squire Carrol at Lady Holt with his bride in 1739, Paul Kelly, the bailiff, informed Lady Mary that the villagers conducted their Lord and Lady home with the uppermost satisfaction. A good phrase. Mr. Gordon writes elsewhere in his book of a famous writer whom Hampshire claims, for at least forty years, 1754 to 1792, Gilbert White was an east-harding squire. The bulk of his property was at Woodhouse and Nye Woods on the northern slope of east-harding, and bounded on the west by the road to Harding Station. The passenger from Harding to the railway has, on his right, immediately opposite the several's wood, Gilbert White's farm, extending nearly to the station. White had also other harding lands. These were upon the downs, vis a portion of the park of Up Park on the south side, and a portion of Kill Devil Lane on the north-margin side of Harding Hill. Gilbert White was on his mother's side a ford, and these lands had been transmitted to him through his great-uncle, Oliver Whitby, nephew to Sir Edward Ford. A glimpse of the old Sussex Field routine, not greatly changed in the remote districts today, was given to Mr. Gordon thirty years ago by an aged labourer. This was the day, out in the morning at four o'clock, mouthful of bread and cheese and pint of ale, then off to the harvest field, ripping and mowing, reaping and mowing, till eight, then morning breakfast and small beer, breakfast, a piece of fat pork, as thick as your hat, a broad brimmed wide-awake, is wide, then work till ten o'clock, then a mouthful of bread and cheese and a pint of strong beer, note Far Nuna, i.e. Four Nuna, Far Nuna's lunch, we called it, end note, work till twelve, then that's dinner in the farmhouse, sometimes a leg of mutton, sometimes a piece of ham and plum pudding, then work till five, then a nunch and a quart of ale, nunch was skimmed cheese, though, then work till sunset, then home and have supper and a pint of ale, I never knew a man drunk in the harvest field in my life, could drink six quarts and believe that a man might drink two gallons in a day, all of us were in the house, i.e. the usual hired servants and those especially engaged for the harvest, the yearly servants used to go with the monthly ones, there was two thrashers and the head thrasher used to always to go before the reapers, a man could cut, according to the goodness of the job, half an acre a day, the terms of wages were three pound ten shillings to fifty shillings for the month, when the hay was in cock or the wheat in shock, then the titheman come, you didn't dare take up a field without you let him know, if the titheman didn't come at the time, you tithed yourself, he marked his sheaves with a bow or bush, you couldn't get over the titheman, if you began at a hedge and made the tenth cock smaller than the rest, the titheman might begin in the middle, just where he liked, the titheman at hearting, old John Blackmore, lived at Mundy's south hearting street, his grandson is blacksmith at hearting now, all the tithing was quiet, you didn't dare even set your egg, still the titheman had been, and Tayan is tithe, the usual day's work was from seven to five, like all Sussex villages, hearting has had its witches and possessors of the evil eye, most curious of these was old Mother Digby, Nay Mullen, who in Mr. Gordon's words, lived at a house in Hogs Lane, east hearting, and had the power of witching herself into a hair, and was continually, like Hecate, attended by dogs. Squire Russell of Tye Oak always lost his hair to the sinkhole of a drain, nearby the old lady's house, one day the dogs caught hold of the hair by its hind quarters, but it escaped down the drain, and Squire Russell instantly opening the old bell dam's door, found her rubbing the part of her body corresponding to that by which the hound had seized the hair. Squire Carroll, however, declined to be hard on the broomstick and its riders, as the following entry in the records of the court leat, held for the Hundred of Dumford in 1747, shows. Also, we present the honourable John Carroll Squire, Lord of this manor, for not having and keeping a ducking stool within the said Hundred of Dumford according to law, for the ducking of skulls and other disorderly persons. The road from south hearting to Elstead runs under the hills, which here rise abruptly from the fields, to great heights, notably Beacon Hill, like a huge green mammoth, eight hundred feet high, on which, before the days of telegraphy, lived the signaler, who passed on the tidings of danger on the coast, to the next Beacon Hill, above Henley, and so on, to London. In the days of Napoleon, when any moment might reveal the French fleet, the Sussex hilltops must often have smouldered under false alarms. The next hill in the east is Trafford Hill, above Trafford Village, whose church tower standing on a little hill of its own, nearly three hundred feet high, might take a lesson in beauty from south heartings, although its spire has a slenderness not to be improved. Next to Trafford Hill is Diddling Hill, above Diddling, and then Lynch Down, highest of all in these parts, being eight hundred and eighteen feet. Elstead, which has no particular interest, possesses an inn, the three horseshoes, on a site superior to that of many a nobleman's house. It stands high above a rocky lane, commanding a superb side-long view of the downs and the wheeled. Midhurst's River is the Rother, not to be confounded with the Rother in the east of Sussex, which flows into the Aron near Hardham. It is wild enough at Midhurst for small boats, and is a very graceful stream on which to idle and watch the few kingfishers that man has spared. One may walk by its side for miles, and hear no sound say the music of repose, the soft munching of the cows in the meadows, the chuckle of the water as a rat slips in, the sudden, yet soothing plash caused by a jumping fish, around one's head in the evening, the stag beetle buzzes with its multiplicity of wings and fierce lobster-like claws outstretched. Following the Rother to the west, one comes first to Eastbourne, a shady cool village only a few steps from Midhurst. Once notable for its Benedictine priory of nuns, Henry VIII put an end to its religious life, which, however, if we may believe the rather disgraceful revelations divulged at an Episcopal examination, for some years had not been of too sincere a character. In Eastbourne Church is the handsome tomb of the first Viscount Montague, the host of Queen Elizabeth, which was brought hither from Midhurst Church some forty years ago. Beyond Eastbourne, on the banks of the Rother, is Woolbeading, a midlush grass and foliage, as green a spot, as any, in Green England. On the eastern side of the town, with a diversion into Queen Elizabeth's somber woodwalk, one may come by the side of the river part of the way to West Lavington, which stands high on a slope facing the Downs, with pine woods immediately beneath it. Perhaps, as fair a sight as any church can claim, the grave of Richard Cobden, the free trader, a native of Hayeshot nearby, is in the churchyard. Here, in 1850, Henry Edward Manning, afterwards cardinal, preached his last sermon for the Church of England. It is indeed Manning country, for besides being curate and rector of Woolavington with Graffam, four or five miles to the southeast. From 1833 until his secession, he was for nine years Archdeacon of Chichester. He married Miss Sargent, daughter of the late rector, and sister of Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce of Woolavington, and while rector he rebuilt both churches. Graffam is interesting also as being the present home of one of the most truthful of living painters, Mr. Henry Latang, whose scenes of peasants at work in the manner of Barbizon and studies of sunlight spattering through the trees are among the triumphs of modern English art. One more village, and we will make for the hills. A mile beyond the eastern gate of Cowdery Park is Lodsworth, still a paradise of apple orchards, but no longer famous for its cider as once it was. Arthur Young had the pleasure of tasting some Lodsworth cider of a superior quality at Lord Egremont's table at the beginning of the last century, but I doubt if Petworth House honours the beverage today. Cider, except in the cider country, becomes less and less common. End of chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Highways and Byways in Sussex This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yersley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas Chapter 3 First sight of the Downs Between Midhurst and Chichester, our next centre, rise the Downs to a height of between 700 and 800 feet. Although we shall often be crossing them again before we leave the county, I should like to speak of them a little in this place. The Downs are the symbol of Sussex. The sea, the wheeled, the heather hills of her great forest district, she shares with other counties, but the Downs are her own. Wiltshire, Barkshire, Kent and Hampshire, it is true, have also their turf-covered chalk hills, but the Sussex Downs are vaster, more remarkable, and more beautiful than these, with more individuality and charm. At first they have been known to disappoint the traveller, but one has only to live among them, or near them, within the influence of their varying moods, and they surely conquer. They are the smoothest things in England, gigantic, rotund, easy. The eye rests upon their gentle contours, and is at peace. They have no sublimity, no grandeur, only the most spacious repose. Perhaps it is due to this quality that the wild and folk, accustomed to be overshadowed by this unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes, and so averse from speculation or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form. A rugged peak will alarm the mind, where a billowy green undulation will lull it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still. No stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder clouds impurple the turf and blacken the hangars, but they cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line. Rain throws over the rangered gore's veil of added softness. A mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic. Snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise they are magical, a background for Mallory. At sunset they are the lovely home of the serenest thoughts, a spectacle for Marcus Aurelius. Their cooms or hollows are then filled with purple shadow cast by the sinking sun, while the summits and shoulders are gold. Gilbert White has an often quoted passage on these hills. Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upward of thirty years, yet I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This range, which runs from Chichester Eastwood as far as Eastbourne, is about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewis. As you pass along, you command a noble view of the wild, or wheeled, on one hand, and the broad Downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family, Mr. Quartthorp of Dany, just at the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from Plumpton Plain, near Lewis, that he mentions those scapes in his Wisdom of God in the works of the creation, with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe. For my own part, I think there is something peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely-figured aspect of the chalk hills, in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the same idea, but I never contemplate these mountains, without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth, in their gentle swellings and smooth, fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation and expansions. Or was there even a time when these immense masses of calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture, were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic power, and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild below. The Downs have a human and historic as well as scenic interest. On many of their highest points are the barrows or graves of our British ancestors, who could they revisit the glimpses of the moon, would find little change, for these hills have been less interfered with than any district within twice the distance from London. The English dislike of climbing has saved them. They will probably be the last stronghold of the horse, when petrol has ousted him from every other region. After the Britain came the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a chain of hills seemed a series of heaven sent earthworks, every point in a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing upon these ramparts today, identical in general configuration in spite of the intervening centuries, one may imagine oneself a Caesarean soldier, and see in fancy the hinds below running for safety. After the Romans came the Saxons, who did not, however, use the heights as their predecessors had. Yet they left even more intimate traces, for, as I shall show in a later chapter on Sussex dialect, the language of the Sussex labourer is still largely theirs. The farms themselves often follow their original Saxon disposition. The field names are unaltered, and the character of the people is of the yellow-haired parent stock. Sussex, in many respects, is still Saxon. In a poem by Mr. W. G. Hull is a stanza which no one that knows Sussex can read without visualising instantly a Sussex hillside farm. The Saxon lies too in his grave where the plow lands swell, and he feels with the joy that his earths the spring with its myriad births, and he scents as the evening falls the rich, deep breath of the stalls, and he says, still the seasons bring increase and joy to the world. It is well. Standing on one of these hills above the heartings, one may remember an event in English history of more recent date than any of the periods that we have been recalling, the escape of Charles II in 1651. It was over these downs that he passed, and it has been suggested that a traveller wishing for a picturesque route across the downs might do well to follow his course. According to the best accounts, Charles was met on the evening of October the 13th near Hamilton in Hampshire, afterwards to be famous as the cradle of first-class cricket, by Thomas and George Gunter of Rackton, with a leash of greyhounds as if for coursing. The king slept at the house of Thomas Simmons, Gunter's brother-in-law. in the character of a roundhead. The next morning at daybreak, the king, Lord Wilmot, and the two gunters crossed broad half-mini down, celebrated by Niren, and proceeding by way of Catherington down, Charlton down, and Ibsworth down, reached Compting down in Sussex. At Stansted House, Thomas Gunter left the king, and hurried on to Brighton to arrange for the crossing to France. The others rode on by way of the hills, with a descent from Duncan Beacon, until they reached what promised to be the security of Houghton Forest. There they were panic-stricken nearly, to meet Captain Morley, Governor of Arundel Castle, and therefore by no means a king's man. The king, on being told who it was, replied merrily, I did not much like his starched mouschats. This peril avoided. They descended to Houghton village, where the Arund was crossed, and so to Amberley, where, in Sir John Briscoe's castle, the king slept. Footnote. That is the story as the Amberley people like to have it. But another version makes his ride from Hamburg to Brighton in one day, in which case he may have avoided Amberley altogether. End footnote. On Amberley Mount the king's horse cast the shoe, necessitating a drop to one of the burpums, at Lee Farm, to have the mishap put right. Ascending from the hills again, the fugitives held the high track as far as staining. At Bramble they survived a second meeting with Cromwellians, three or four soldiers of Colonel Herbert Morley, of Glind, suddenly appearing, but being satisfied merely to insult them. At Beading George Gunter rode on by way of the lower road to Brighton, while the king and Lord Wilmot climbed the hill at Houghton, crossing by way of white lot to Sothick, where, according to one story, in a cottage at the west of the green was a hiding-hole in which the king lay, until Captain Nicholas Tattersall of Brighton was ready to embark him for Faycamp. George Gunter's own story is, however, that the king rode direct to Brighton. He reached Faycamp on October the 16th. Two hours after Gunter left Brighton, soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man six feet four inches high to wit the merry monarch. Such is the bare narrative of Charles Sussex's ride. If the reader would have it garnished and spiced, he should turn to the pages of Ainsworth's Ovingdeem Grange, where much that never happened is set forth as entertainingly, or so I thought when I read it as a boy, as if it were truth. End of chapter three. Chapter four of Highways and Byways in Sussex. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Peter Yearsley. Highways and Byways in Sussex by E. V. Lucas. Chapter four, Chichester. I have already quoted some lines by Collins on Otway. It is time to come to Collins himself. When music, heavenly made, was young, while yet in early Greece she sung, the passions oft to hear her shell thronged around her magic cell. The perfect ode which opens with these unforgettable lines belongs to Chichester, for William Collins was born there on Christmas Day, 1721, and educated there at the Prebendal school until he went to Winchester. William Collins was the son of the Mayor of Chichester, a hatter from whom Pope's friend Carol bought his hats. I have no wish to tell here the sad story of Collins' life. It is better to remember that few as are his odes, they are all of gold. He died at Chichester in 1759, and was buried in St Andrew's Church. With eyes up raised as one inspired, pale melancholy sat, retired, and from her wild sequestered seat in notes by distance made more sweet, poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul, and dashing soft from rocks around, bubbling runnels joined the sound, through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay, round and wholly calm diffusing, love of peace, and lonely musing, in hollow murmurs died away. Collins is Chichester's great poet. She had a very agreeable minor poet, too, in George Smith, one of the three Smiths, all artists. William, born in 1707, painter of portraits and of fruit and flower pieces, and George and John, born in 1713 and 1717, who painted landscapes, known collectively as the Smiths of Chichester. I mention them rather on account of George Smith's political experiments, than for the brothers' fame as artists. But there is such a pleasant flavour in one at least of his pastoral's, that I have copied a portion of it. It is called the Country Lovers, or Isaac and Margaret, going to town on a summer's morning. The town is probably Chichester, certainly one in Sussex and near the Downs. Isaac speaks first. Come, Margaret, come, the team is at the gate. Not ready yet. You always make me wait. I omit a certain amount of the dialogue which follows, but at last Margaret exclaims, Well, now I'm ready. Long I have not stayed. Isaac, one kiss before we go, my pretty maid. Margaret, go, don't be foolish, Isaac. Get away! Who loiter's now? I thought I could not stay. There, that's enough. Why, Isaac, sure you're mad. Isaac, one more, my dearest girl. Margaret, be quiet, lad. See both my cap and hair are rumpled o'er. The tying of my beads is got before. Isaac, there let it stay, thy brighter blush to show, which shames the cherry-coloured silken bow. Thy lips, which seem the scarlet's hue to steal, are sweeter than the candied lemon peel. Margaret, pray take these chickens for me to the cart. Dear little creatures, how it grieves my heart to see them tied. That never knew a crime, and formed so fine a flock at feeding time. The pretty poem ends with fervid protestations of devotion from Isaac. For thee the press with apple-juice shall foam. For thee the bees shall quit their honey-comb. For thee the elder's purple fruit shall grow. For thee the pails with cream shall overflow. But see yon teams returning from the town. Wind in the chalky wheel-rut, so are the down. We now must haste, for if we longer stay, they'll meet us ere we leave the narrow way. Another of Chitchester's illustrious sons is Archbishop Jackson, who stood by the side of Charles I on the scaffold, and bad farewell to him, in the words, You are exchanging from a temporal to an eternal crown a good exchange. Yet another of a very different type is John Hardham. When they talked of their rafales, corregios, and stuff, wrote Goldsmith of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. Had it not been for Chitchester, the great painter might never have had the second of these consolations, for the only snuff he liked was Hardham's number thirty-seven, and Hardham was a native of Chitchester. Before he became famous as a tobacconist, Hardham was by night a numberer of the pit for Garrick at Drury Lane. One day he happened to blend Dutch and Rapie, and poured the mixture into a drawer labelled thirty-seven. Garrick so liked the pinch of it which he chanced upon, that he introduced a reference to its merits in some of his comic parts, with the results that Hardham's little shop in Fleet Street soon became a resort, and no nose was properly furnished without number thirty-seven. As Colton wrote in his hypocrisy, A name is all. From Garrick's breath a puff of praise gave immortality to snuff, since which each connoisseur a transient heaven finds in each pinch of Hardham thirty-seven. The wealth that came to the tobacconist, he left to the city of Chitchester to relieve it of certain of its poor rates, and the citizens still magnify Hardham's name. He died in 1772, and had the good sense to restrict the expense of his funeral to ten pounds. Chitchester was the scene of a pleasant incident recorded by Leslie in his autobiographical recollections. He was staying with Wilkie at Petworth, the guest of their patron, and the patron of so many other painters, Lord Egremont, of whom we shall learn more when Petworth is reached. They all drove over to Chitchester after a visit to Goodwood. Lord Egremont, says Leslie, had some business to transact at Chitchester, but one of his objects was to show us a young girl, the daughter of an upholsterer, who was devoted to painting, and considered to be a genius by her friends. She was not at home, but her mother said she could soon be found, if his lordship would have the goodness to wait a short time. The young lady soon appeared, breathless and exhausted with running. Lord Egremont mentioned our names, and she said, looking up to Wilkie with an expression of great respect, oh, sir, it was but yesterday I had your head in my hands. This puzzled him, as he did not know she was a phrenologist. And what bumps did you find? said Lord Egremont. The organ of veneration, very large, was her answer, and Wilkie, making her a profound bow, said, Madam, I have a great veneration for genius. She showed us an unfinished picture from the Bride of Lammamore. The figure of Lucy Ashton was completed, and she told us was the portrait of a young friend of hers, but Ravenswood was without a head, and this she explained by saying, there are no handsome men in Chitchester, but she continued, her countenance brightening, the tenth are expected here soon. The tenth was noted for its handsome officers. Leslie does not carry the story, Father, whether poor Ravenswood ever gained his head, whether if he did so it was a military one, or, as a last resource, a Chitchester one, and where the picture, if completed, now is, I do not know, nor have I succeeded in discovering any more of the young lady, but passing through the streets of the town, I was conscious of the absence of the tenth. Chitchester is a perfect example of an English rural capital, thronged on market days with tilt carts, each bringing a farmer or farmer's wife, and rich in those well-stored ironmongers' shops that one never sees elsewhere. But it is more than this, it is also a cathedral town, with the ever-present sense of domination by the cloth, even when the cloth is not visible. Chitchester has its roughs and its public houses. Note Mr. Hudson, in his Nature in Downland, gives them a caustic chapter. It also has its race week every July, and barracks within Hale, yet it is always a cathedral town. Whatever noise may be in the air, you know in your heart that quietude is its true characteristic. One might say that above the loudest street cries, you are continually conscious of the silence of the close. Chitchester's cathedral is not among the most beautiful or the most interesting, but there is none cooler. It dates from the 11th century, and contains specimens of almost every kind of church architecture, but the spire is comparatively new, having been built in 1866 to take the place of its predecessor, which suddenly dropped like an extinguisher five years before. Seen from the channel it rises, a friendly landmark, white or gray according to the clouds, and while walking on the downs, above or on the plain around, one is frequently pleased to catch an unexpected glimpse of its tapering beauty. I have heard it said that Chitchester is the only English cathedral that is visible at sea. Within, the cathedral is disappointing, offering one neither richness on the one hand, nor the charm of pure severity on the other. A cathedral must either be plain or coloured, and Chitchester comes short of both ideals. It has no colour and no purity. Its proportions are, however, exquisite, and it is impossible to remain here long without passing under the spell of the stone. Yet had it, one feels only radiance how much finer it would be. For the completest contrast to the vastness of the cathedral, one may cross into North Street and enter the portal of the Toy Church of St. Olaf, which dates from the 14th century and is remarkable not only for its minuteness, but as being one of the churches of Chitchester, which, in my experience, is not normally locked and barred. That Chitchester was built by the Romans in the geometrical Roman way. You may see as you look down from the bell tower upon its four main streets, North, South, East and West, East becoming Stain Street, and running direct to London, Chitchester then was Regnum. On the departure of the Romans, Kissa, son of Ella, took possession, and the name was changed to Kissa's Chaiastery, hence Chitchester. Remnants of the old walls still stand, and a path has been made on the portion running from North Street down to Westgate. More attractive, because more human, than the cathedral itself, are its precincts, the long, resounding cloisters, the still, discrete lanes, populace with clerics, and, most of all, that little terrace of ecclesiastical residences parallel with South Street, in the shadow of the mighty Fane, covered with creeping greenness, from Wisteria to Amphalopsis, with minute windows, inviolable front doors, and trim front gardens, which, like all similar settlements, remind one of arms houses carried out to the highest power, surely the best of places, in which to edit horrors afresh or find new meanings in St Augustine. There is a tendency for the cathedral to absorb all the attention of the traveller, but Chitchester has other beauties, including the Market Cross, which is a mere child of stone, dating only from the reign of Henry VIII, St Mary's Hospital in North Street, and the remains of the monastery of the Grey Friars in the Priory Park. Young Chitchester now plays cricket where, of old, the monks caught fish and performed their duties. It was probably on the mound that their calvary stood. The last time I climbed it was to watch Bonner, the Australian giant practicing in the nets below, too many years ago. Like all cathedral towns, Chitchester has beautiful gardens, as one may see from the Campanile. There are no lawns like the lawns of bishops, deans, and colleges, and few flower beds more luxuriously stocked. Chitchester also has a number of grave, solid houses, such as Miss Austen's characters might have lived in, at least one superb specimen of the art of Sir Christopher Wren, a masterpiece of substantial red brick, and a noble inn, the Dolphin, where one dines in the assembly room, a relic of the good times before inns became hotels. We have some glimpses of old Chitchester in the reminiscences, about 1720 to 1730, of James Spurshot, a Chitchester Baptist elder who died in 1789, aged 80. I quote a passage here and there from his paper of recollections, printed in the Sussex Archaeological Collections. Spinning of household linen was in use in most families, also making their own bread, and likewise their own household physique. No tea, but much industry and good cheer. The bacon racks were loaded with bacon, for little pork was made in these times. The farmer's wife's and daughter's were plain in dress, and made no such gay figures in our market as nowadays. At Christmas the whole constellation of patty-pans, which adorned their chimney fronts, were taken down. The spit, the pot, the oven, were all in use together. The evenings spent in jollity, and their glass guns, smoking, toped the tumbler with the froth of good October, till most of them were slain or wounded, and the Prince of Orange and Queen Anne's Marlborough could no longer be resounded. Here is Mr. Spurshot's account of a Chitchester Calamity, to no page, Esquire, native of this city. Coming from London to stand candidate here, a great number of voters went on horseback to meet him. Among the rest Mr. Joshua Lover, a noted schoolmaster, a sober man in the general, but of flighty passions, as he was setting out one of his scholars, Patti Smith, afterwards my spouse, asked him for a copy, and in haste he wrote the following, extremes beget extremes, extremes avoid, extremes without extremes are not enjoyed. He set off in high carrier, and turning down Rooks Hill before the square, riding like a madman to and fro, forward and backward, hallowing among the company, the horse at full speed fell with him, and killed him, a caution to the flighty and unsteady, and a verification of his copy. Again, Robert Madlock, a most profane swearer, being employed in cleaning the outside of the steeple, fell going to a breaking rope, and soon after died. Mr. Spurshot adds, a warning to swearers. Another entry states, in my younger years there were many very large, corpulent persons in the city, both of men and women. I could now recite by name between twenty and thirty, the greater part of that number, so prodigious that like other animals thoroughly fatted, they could hardly move about. One of Chichester's epitaphs runs thus, Here lies a true soldier, whom all must applaud, much hardship he suffered at home and abroad, but the hardest engagement he ever was in was the battle of self in the conquest of sin. I have left until the last, the prettiest thing in this city of comely streets and houses, St. Mary's Hospital, at the end of Lion Street, out of North Street, the quaintest arms house in the world. The building stands back behind the ordinary houses and is gained by a passage and a courtyard. You then enter what seems to be a church, for at the far end is an altar, beneath an unmistakably ecclesiastical window. But when the first feeling of surprise has passed, you discover that there is only a small chancel at the east end of the building, on either side of which are little dwellings. Each of these is occupied by a nice little old woman, who has two rooms, very minute and cosy, with a little supply of faggots close at hand, and all the dignity of a householder, although the occupant only of an infinitesimal toy house within a house. How do they agree one wonders these little old ladies of a touchy age under their great roof? Different accounts are given of the origin of St. Mary's Hospital. Mr. Lower says that it was founded in 1229 for a chaplain and thirteen beadsman. In 1562 a warden and five inmates were the prescribed occupants. Now there are eight sets of rooms, each with its demure tenant, all of whom troop into the little chapel at fixed hours. Mrs. Evans, Sacristain, who does the honours, would tell me nothing as to the process of selection by which she and the seven other occupants came to be living there. All that she could say was that she was very happy to be a hospitaler, and that by no possibility could one of the little domiciles ever fall to me. Chichester may have a cathedral and a history, but nine out of ten strangers know of it only as a station for Goodwood Racecourse. Towards which, in that hot week at the end of July, hundreds of carriages toil by the steep road that skirts the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's Park. Goodwood Park gives me little pleasure. I miss the deer, and when the first park that one ever knew was buxted with its moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle, even for Alderneys, is the meadow. Cows in a park are a poor makeshift. Parks are for deer. To my eyes Goodwood House has a chilling exterior. The road to the hilltop is steep and lengthy, and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find in the heart of the country among rolling-downs, sacred to hawks and solitude, a grand stand, and the railings of a racecourse. Racecourses are for the outskirts of towns, as at Brighton and Lewis, or for hills that have no mystery and no magic, like the heights of Ebsom, or for such mockeries of parks as Sandown and Kempton, the good park has many deer and no racecourse. And yet Goodwood is superb, for it has some of the finest trees in Sussex within its walls, including the survivors of a thousand cedars of Lebanon planted a hundred and fifty years ago, and with every step higher one unfolds a wider view of the channel and the plain. Best of these prospects is perhaps that gained from Khan's seat, as the Belvedere to the left of the road to the racecourse is called. Its name deriving from an old servant of the family, whose wooden hut was situated here when Khan died, and whose name and fame were thus perpetuated. The stones of the building were in part those of Old Hove Church near Brighton, then lately demolished. In Goodwood House, which is shown on regular days, are fine Van Dykes and Lelys, relics of the two Charles, and above all the fascinatingly absorbing Cenotaph of Lord Darnley, a series of scenes in the life of that ill-fated husband. It may be said that among all the treasures of Sussex, there is nothing quite so interesting as this. Leaving Chichester by East Street, or Stain Street, the old Roman road to London, one comes first to West Hamptonit, famous as the birthplace in 1792 of Frederick William Lilliewight, the non-paree bowler whom we shall meet again at Brighton. A mile and a half beyond is Halnaker, midway between two ruins, those of Halnaker House to the north, and Boxgrove Priory to the south. Of the remains of Halnaker House, a Tudor mansion once the home of the Deloise, little may now be seen, but Boxgrove is still very beautiful, as Mr Griggs' drawings prove. The Priory dates from the reign of Henry I, when it was founded very modestly for three Benedictine monks, a number which steadily grew. Seven Henrys later came its downfall, and now nothing remains but some exquisite Norman arches and a few less perfect fragments. Boxgrove Church is an object of pilgrimage for antiquaries and architects, the vaulting being peculiarly interesting. At the Halnaker Arms in 1902 was a landlady whom few cooks could teach anything in the matter of pastry. The next village on Stain Street, or rather a little south of it, about two miles beyond Halnaker, is Ertham, which brings to mind William Haley, the friend and biographer of Calpa, and the author of The Triumphs of Temper, perhaps the least-read of any book that once was popular. Haley succeeded his father as squire of Ertham, here he entertained Calpa and other friends, here Romney painted. When need came for retrenchment, Haley let Ertham to Huskison, the statesman, and moved to Felpham on the coast, where we shall meet with him again. Calpa's occupations upon this charming Sussex hillside are recorded in Haley's account of the visit. Homer was not the immediate object of our attention, while Calpa resided at Ertham. The morning hours that we could bestow on books were chiefly devoted to a complete revise and correction of all the translations which my friend had finished from the Latin and Italian poetry of Milton, and we generally amused ourselves after dinner in forming together a rapid metrical version of Andraini's Adamo. But the constant care which the delicate health of Mrs. Unwin required rendered it impossible for us to be very assiduous in study, and perhaps the best of all studies was to promote and share that most singular and most exemplary tenderness of attention, with which Calpa incessantly laboured to counteract every infirmity, bodily and mental, with which sickness and age had conspired to load this interesting guardian of his afflicted life. The air of the south infused a little portion of fresh strength into her shattered frame, and to give it all possible efficacy the boy, whom I have mentioned, and a young associate and fellow student of his, employed themselves regularly, twice a day, in drawing this venerable cripple in a commodious garden chair round the airy hill of Ertham. To Calpa and to me it was a very pleasing spectacle to see the benevolent vivacity of blooming youth, thus continually labouring for the ease, health and amusement of disabled age. The poet and Mrs. Unwin, after much trepidation and doubt, had left western Underwood on August 1, 1792. They slept at Barnett the first night, Ripley the next, and were at Ertham by ten o'clock on the third. They stayed till September. Calpa described Haley's estate as one of the most delightful pleasure-grounds in the world. I had no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise, and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming. The poet, apart from his rapid treatment of Adamo, did not succeed independently in attaining to Haley's fluency among these surroundings. I am in truth so unaccountably local in the use of my pen, he wrote to Lady Hesketh, that like the man in the fable who could leap well, nowhere but at roads, I seem incapable of writing at all except at Western. Hence the only piece that he composed in our county was the epitaph on Phop, a dog belonging to Lady Throckmorton. But while he was at Ertham, Romney drew his portrait in crayons. Calpa always looked back upon his visit with pleasure, but, as he remarked, the genius of Western Underwood suited him better. It has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels itself peculiarly gratified, whereas now I see from every window woods like forests and hills like mountains a wilderness in short that rather increases my natural melancholy. Accordingly I have not looked out for a house in Sussex, nor shall. The simplest road from Chichester to the Downs is the railway. The little train climbs laboriously to Singleton, and then descends to Cocking and Midhurst. By leaving it at Singleton, one is quickly in the heart of this vast district of wooded hills, sometimes wholly forested, sometimes as in West Dean Park, curiously studded with circular clumps of trees. The most interesting spot to the east of the line is Charlton, once so famous among sporting men, but now, alas, unknown. For Charlton was of old a southern Melton-Mowbray, the very center of the aristocratic hunting county. The Charlton hunt had two palmy periods. Before the Duke of Monmouth Rebellion, and after the accession of William III, Monmouth and Lord Gray kept two packs, the master being Squire Roper. With the fall of Monmouth, Roper fled to France to hunt at Chantilly, but on the accession of William III he returned to Sussex, the hounds resumed their old condition, and the Charlton pack became the most famous in the world. On the death of Mr. Roper, in the hunting field at 1715, at the age of 84, the Duke of Bolton took the master ship, which he held until the charms of Ms. Fenton, the actress, the polypeacham of the beggar's opera, lured him to the tents of the women. Then came the glorious reign of the second Duke of Richmond, when sport with the Charlton was at its height. The Charlton hunt declined upon his death in 1750, became known as the Goodwood hunt, and wholly ceased to be at the beginning of the last century. The crowning glory of the Charlton hunt was the run of Friday, January 26, 1738, which is thus described in an old manuscript. A full and impartial account of the remarkable chaser to Charlton on Friday, 26 January 1738. It has long been a matter of controversy in the hunting world to what particular country or set of men the superiority belonged. Prejudices and partiality have the greatest share in their disputes, and every society their proper champion to assert the preeminence and bring home the trophy to their own country. Even Richmond Park has the democ. But on Friday, the 26th of January, 1738, there was a decisive engagement on the plains of Sussex, which, after ten hours' struggle, has settled all further debate, and given the brush to the gentleman of Charlton. Present in the morning, the Duke of Richmond, Duchess of Richmond, Duke of St. Albans, the Lord Viscount Harcourt, the Lord Henry Bo Clark, the Lord Osselstown, Sir Harry Liddle, Brigadier Henry Hawley, Ralph Jenison, Master of His Majesty's Buckhounds, Edward Pondsford Esquire, William Farqua Esquire, Cornette Philip Honiwood, Richard Biddle Fisquire, Charles Biddle Fisquire, Mr. St. Paul, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Peerman, of Chichester, Mr. Thompson, Tom Johnson, Billy Ives, Yeoman Pricker to His Majesty's Hounds, David Briggs, and Nym Ives, Whippers Inn. At a quarter before eight in the morning, the fox was found in East Dean Wood, and ran an hour in that cover, then into the forest, up to Puntis Coppice, through Herring Dean to the Marlows, up to Coney Coppice, back to the Marlows, to the forest Westgate, over the fields to Nightingale Bottom, to Cobdons at Draft, up his Pine Pit Hangar, where his Grace of St. Albans got a fall, through my Lady Lucna's Puttocks, and missed the earth, through West Dean Forest, to the corner of Collardown, where Lord Harcourt blew his first horse, crossed the Hackney Place, down the length of Coney Coppice, through the Marlows to Herring Dean, into the forest, and Prentice Coppice, East Dean Wood, through the Lower T. Glaze, across by Cocking Course, down between Graffham and Willavington, through Mr. Orms Park and Paddock, over the heath, to Fielders Fursies, to the Harlan's Selum Ambusham, through Toddam Fursies, over Toddam Heath, almost to Cowdery Park, there turned to the Lime Kiln at the end of Cocking Causeway, through Cocking Park and Fursies, there crossed the road, and up the hills between Bepton and Cocking. Here, the unfortunate Lord Harcourt's second horse felt the effects of long legs and a sudden steep. The best thing that belonged to him was his saddle, which my Lord had secured, but by Bleeding and Geneva, contrary to Act of Parliament, he recovered, and with some difficulty was got home. Here, Mr. Farquhar's humanity claims your regard, who kindly sympathized with my Lord in his misfortunes, and had not power to go beyond him. At the bottom of Cocking Warren, the hounds turned to the left, across the road by the barn near Herring Dean, then took the side near to the North Gate of the forest. Here, General Hawley thought it prudent to change his horse for a true blue that stayed up the hills. Billy Ives likewise took a horse of Sir Harry Liddles, went quite through the forest, and run the foil through Nightingale Bottom to Cobdon at Draft, up his Pine Pit Hanger to my Lady Lucna's Puttox, through every muse she went in the morning, went through the Warren above West Dean, where we dropped Sir Harry Liddell down to Benderdon Farm. Here, Lord Harry sank, through Goodwood Park, here the Duke of Richmond chose to send three lame horses back to Charlton, and took Saucy Face and Sir William, that were luckily at Goodwood. From thence, at a distance, Lord Harry was seen driving his horse before him to Charlton. The hounds went out at the upper end of the park over Strattington Road, by Sealy Coppice, where his Grace of Richmond got a Somerset, through Halnecker Park over Halnecker Hill to Sea Beach Farm. Here, the master of the stag hounds, Cornette, Honiwood, Tom Johnson, and Nim Ives, were thoroughly satisfied. Up long down, through earthen common fields, and Kemp's Highwood, here Billy Ives tried his second horse, and took Sir William, by which the Duke of St. Albans had no great coat. So returned to Charlton. From Kemp's Highwood the hounds took away through Gunworth Warren, Kemp's Ruffpeace, over Slindon, down to Maidhurst Parsonage, where Billy came in with them, over Pourdown, up to Maidhurst, then down to Houghton Forest, where his Grace of Richmond, General Hawley, and Mr. Pornsfort came in, the latter, to little purpose, for beyond the rural hill neither Mr. Pornsfort nor his horse Tinker cared to go, so wisely returned to his impatient friends. Up the rural hill, left shoreward on the right bank, crossed Offam Hill to Southwood, from thence to South Stoke, to the wall of Arundel River, where the glorious twenty-three hounds put an end to the campaign, and killed an old bitch fox ten minutes before six. Billy Ives, his Grace of Richmond, and General Hawley, were the only persons in her to the death, to the immortal honour of seventeen stone, and at least as many campaigns. In Singleton Church is a record of the Charlton hunt in the shape of a memorial to one of the huntsmen, the moral of which seems to be that we must all be huntsmen too. Near this place lies interred Thomas Johnson, who departed this life at Charlton, December 20th, 1774. From his early inclination to foxhounds he soon became an experienced huntsman. His knowledge in the profession, wherein he had no superior, and hardly an equal, joined to his honesty in every other particular, recommended him to the service, and gained him the approbation of several of the nobility and gentry. Among these were the Lord Conway, Earl of Cardigan, the Lord Gower, the Duke of Marlborough, the Honourable M. Spencer, the last master, whom he served, and in whose service he died, was Charles, Duke of Richmond, Lenox, and Obiny, who erected this monument in memory of a good and faithful servant, as a reward to the deceased, and an incitement to the living. Go and do thou likewise. St. Luke, Chapter 10, Verse 37 Here Johnson lies what human can deny, old honest Tom, the tribute of a sigh. Death is that ear which caught the opening sound, dumb that tongue which cheered the hills around. Unpleasing truth, death hunts us from our birth, in view and men like foxes take to earth. A few words on the packs of Sussex at the present time may be interesting in this connection. Chief is the South Down Foxhounds, a very fine, fast pack, brought to a high state of perfection by the late master, the Honourable Charles Brand. They hunt the open and hill country, between the Adour and Cuckmere, between Hayward's Heath and the Sea. In the North are the Crawley and Horsham Foxhounds, which have large woodlands, high hedges, and some stiff plowed soil, to their less easy lot. The hounds are bigger and heavier than the South Downers. Smaller packs are Lord Leaconfield's Foxhounds, which have the Charlton Country, the Eastborn Foxhounds, to which the East Sussex Foxhounds are lotted, a share of the western part of their country, east of the Cuckmere, and the Burstow and Erridge packs. Of Harriers, the best are the Brighton Harriers, so long hunted by Mr Hugh Gorringe of Kingston by Sea. A very smart pack, lately covering the ground between the Adour and Falmer, and now adding the Brookside Harriers country to their own domain, the two packs having been amalgamated. In the east are the Bex Hill Harriers, and the Hailsham Harriers, and in the west, the South Coast Harriers, for the Chichester country. Sussex, in addition to possessing the Warnham Staghounds, is much raided by the Surrey Staghounds. The Crowhurst Otterhounds also visit the Sussex streams now and then. Foot-beagles may be numerous, but I know only of the Brighton pack. And here let me give Mr Knox's description of a day's shooting in the Gentlemanly Way on the Sussex Downs, following in his ornithological rambles upon some remarks on the Battoo. How different is the pursuit of the pheasant with the aid of spaniels in the thick covers of the Weald, or tracking him with a single setter among some of the wilder portions of the Forest Range, intently observing your dog, and anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, break, fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled the bird to squat under that wide holly bush, from whence you kick him up, and feel some little exaltation as you bring him down with a snapshot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at the opposite side of the tree. And then the Woodcock shooting in November, I must take you back once more to my favourite downs. With the first full moon during that month, especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights of woodcocks, which drop in the covers and are dispersed among the bushy valleys, and even over the heathery summits of the hills. If it should happen to be a propitious year for beach mast, the great attraction to pheasants on the downs, as is the acorn in the wheeled, you may procure partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits in perhaps equal proportions, with half a dozen woodcocks to crown the bag. The extensive undulating commons and heaths dotted with broken patches of scotch firs and hollies on the ferruginous sand north of the downs, afford where the menorial rites are enforced, still great a variety of sport. On this wild ground accompanied by my spaniels and an old retriever, and attended only by one man to carry the game, I have enjoyed as good sport as mortal need desire on this side of the tweed. Here is a rough sketch of a morning's work. Commencing operations by walking along a turnip field, two or three covies spring wildly from the farther end, and fly, as I expect, to the adjoining common, where they are marked down on a brow thickly clothed with firs, marching towards them with spaniels at heel, up jumps a hair under my nose, then another, then a rabbit, I reload rapidly, and on reaching the gorse put in the dogs. There goes a partridge. The spaniels drop to the report of my gun, but the fluttering wings of the dying bird rouse two of his neighbors before I am ready, and away they fly, screaming loudly. The remainder are flushed in detail, and I succeed in securing the greater part of them. Now for the next covie. They were marked down in that little hollow where the heather is longer than usual, a beautiful spot, but before I reach it up they all spring in an unexpected quarter, that cunning old patriarch at their head had cleverly called them together to a naked part of the hill, from whence he could observe my manoeuvres, and a random shot sent after him with hearty goodwill proved totally ineffective. Now the spaniels are worming through the thick sedges on either side of the brook which intersects the moor, and by their bustling anxiety it is easy to see that game is afoot. Keeping well in front of them I am just in time for a satisfactory right and left at two cock pheasants, which they had hunted down to the very edge of the water before they could persuade them to take wing. Now for that little alder copy set to the farther end of the marshy swamp. Hark to that whipping sound so different from the rush of the rising pheasant, or the drumming flight of the partridge. I cannot see the bird, but I know it is a woodcock. This must be one of his favourite haunts, for I perceive the tracks of his feet, and the perforations of his bill in every direction on the black mud around. Mark, again, a second is sprung, and as he flips between the naked alders a snapshot stops his career. I now emerge at the farther end, just where the trees are thinner than elsewhere. A wisp of snipes utter their well-known cry, and scud over the heath. One of these is secured. The rest fly towards a little pool of dark water, lying at a considerable distance from the common. A well-known rendezvous for those birds. Cautiously approaching, downwind, I reach the margin. Upsprings a snipe, but just as my finger is on the trigger, and when too late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the rushes, and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunately left, and the drake comes tumbling to the ground. Three or four pheasants, another couple of woodcocks, a few more snipes, a teal or two, and half a dozen rabbits picked up at various intervals, complete the day's sport, and I return home better pleased with myself and my dogs than if we had compassed the destruction of all the hairs in the county, or assisted at the immolation of a perfect hecatomb of pheasants. Kingly Bottom is the most interesting spot to the west of Singleton. One may reach it either through Chilgrove, or by walking back towards Chichester, as far as Bindutton House, turning then to the right and walking due west for a couple of miles. Report says that the use in Kingly Bottom, or Kingly Vale, mark a victory of Chichester men over a party of marauding Danes in 900, and that the dead were buried beneath the barrows on the hill. The story ought to be true. The Vale is remarkable for its grove of use, some of enormous girth, which extends along the bottom to the foot of the escarpment. The charge that might be brought against Sussex, that it lacks sombre scenery and the elements of dark romance, that its character is too open and transparent, would be urged to no purpose in Kingly Vale, which, always grave and silent, is transformed at dusk into a sinister and fantastic forest, a home for witchcraft and unquiet spirits. So it seems to me, but among the verses of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet and the friend of Charles Lamb, I lately chanced upon a sonnet. Written on hearing it remarked that the scenery of Kingly Bottom was too gloomy to be termed beautiful, and that it was also associated with dolorous recollections of druidical sacrifices. In this poem Barton takes a surprisingly novel line. Nay, nay, it is not gloomy. He begins, and the end is thus. Nor fancy druid rites have left a stain upon its gentle beauties. Loiter there in a calm summer night confess how fair its moonlight charms, and thou wilt learn how vain and transitory superstitions reign over a spot which gladsome thoughts may share. The ordinary person, not a poet, would, I fear, prefer to think of Kingly Bottom's druidical past. The last time I was in Kingly Bottom, it was in April. After leaving the barrows on the summit of the bow hill above the veil, I walked by devious ways to East Marden, between banks thick with the whitest and sweetest of sweet white violets. East Marden, however, has no inn, and is therefore not the best friend of the traveller. But it has the most modest and least ecclesiastical-looking church in the world, and by seeking it out I learned two secrets, the finest place for white violets, and the finest place to keep a horse. There is no riding country to excel this hill district between Singleton and the Hampshire border. At the neighbouring village of Stouton, wither I meant to walk, since an inn is there, was born in 1783 the terrible George Brown, Brown of Brighton, the fast bowler whose arm was as thick as an ordinary man's thigh. He had two long stops, one of whom padded his chest with straw, a long stop once held his coat before one of Brown's balls, but the ball went through it and killed a dog on the other side. Brown could throw a four-and-a-half ounce ball a hundred and thirty-seven yards, and he was the father of seventeen children. He died at Sompting in 1857. Of Rackton on the Hampshire border, and its association with Charles II, I have already spoken, below it is Westbourne, a small border village in whose churchyard are two pleasing epitaphs. Of Jane, wife of Thomas Curtis, who died in 1719, it is written, she was like a lily, fresh and green, soon cast down and no more seen. And of John Cook, Pope said, an honest man is the noblest work of God. If Pope's assertion be from error clear, one of God's noblest works lies buried here. End of chapter five