During the Saxon aera, this town was almost the centre of the kingdom of the South Saxons; and consequently could not be the scene of much action.  It submitted to the various revolutions which prevailed at different times, until the Norman conquest.

The conqueror landed at Hastings forty miles distant to the east of this town; so that his troops never came near it.  Yet, the fate of England being decided by the bloody engagement at Battel, this town, with many other large possessions in the county, was granted to William de Warren, who married the Conqueror’s daughter:  and he soon made it part of the endowment of that rich priory, which he founded at Lewes.

This resigning of the town into the hands of monks was a fatal stroke to its ancient greatness.  Too attentive to their own immediate interest, and too regardless of that of their vassals, as soon as they were in possession of it, they laboured, and with success, to obtain an exemption for it from supplying the king with ships, or affording him such other succour, as a large and powerful maritime town ought to have done, on the pretence of its being part of a religious estate.

(To be concluded in our next.)

    [1] It appears to have been called Brighton in a terrier of lands,
        dated in 1660.

    [2] In the years 1800 and 1801, when wheat was at an unprecedented
        price, the occupiers of farms on the South Downs converted much
        of their downland into tillage, from which they acquired abundant
        crops of corn.  The green sward when once ploughed, can never be
        restored to its former verdure, and although grass seeds have
        been yearly sown in succession for more than 80 years upon down
        formerly broken up and converted into arable land, the
        distinctions between these parts and the original down is still
        clearly perceptible.

    [3] See the remains of a Druidical altar at Goldstone (Gor or Thor
        stone) bottom, about a mile to the north-west of the town.

    [4] A Mosaic pavement has been discovered at Lancing, within nine
        miles west of the town.

* * * * *

FINE ARTS

* * * * *

LARGE PAINTED WINDOW OF THE CRUCIFIXION.

Mr. Wilmshurst has nearly completed a fine copy, on glass, of Mr. Hilton’s celebrated picture of the Crucifixion.  It consists of 118 squares, 15 by 21 inches each, fitted into copper frames, in a large centre and two sides; in all 19 feet high, and 15 feet wide, intended for a Venetian window-case in St. George’s Church, Liverpool.  The original picture was painted for this purpose, by commission from the Corporation, in the year 1826, for which the artist received 1,000 guineas.  Perhaps in all the productions of British art there is not a