while such heights as Barton Hill in Leicestershire and Leith Hill in Surrey were heavily scored with names of places seen, the latter including that oft-told tale—­a legend, so far as the present writer is aware—­of St. Paul’s dome and the sea being visible with a turn of the head.  Though our idea of proportion in relation to scenery has suffered a change, Gilbert White’s phrase must not be sneered at; and most comparisons are stupidly unfair.  The outline of Mount Caburn is a rounded edition of the most perfect of all forms.  The rolling undulations of the tamest portions of the range are broken by combes whose sides are steep enough to give a spice of adventure to their descent.  The “prospects,” as such, are immeasurably superior to those obtainable from most of the mountains of the north and west, where a distant view is rare by reason of the surrounding chain of heights, and where the chance of any view at all to reward the climber is remote unless he chooses that fortnight in early June or late September when the peaks are usually unshrouded.  Really bad weather, long continued, is uncommon in the Down country.  A dull or wet spell is soon over.  The writer has set out from Worthing in a thin drizzle of the soaking variety, descending from a sky of lead stretching from horizon to horizon, which in the north would be accepted as an institution of forty-eight hours at least, and on arriving at the summit of Chanctonbury has been rewarded by a glorious green and gold expanse glittering under a dome of intense blue.

[Illustration:  Market cross, Alfriston.]

From the wooded heights of the Hampshire border to that grand headland where the hills find their march arrested by the sea, the escarpment of the Downs is sixty miles long and every mile is beautiful.  It would be an ideal holiday, a series of holy days, to follow the edge all the way, meeting with only three valley breaks of any importance; but the charm of the hill villages nestling in their tree embowered and secluded combes would be too much for any ordinary human, especially if he were thirsty, so in this book the traveller is taken up and down without any regard for his consequent fatigue, when it is assured that his rest will be sweet, even though it may be only under a hawthorn bush!

[Illustration:  A Sussex lane, Jevington.]

“No breeze so fresh and invigorating as that of the Sussex Downs; no turf so springy to the feet as their soft greensward.  A flight of larks flies past us, and a cloud of mingled rooks and starlings wheel overhead....  The fairies still haunt this spot, and hold their midnight revels upon it, as yon dark rings testify.  The common folk hereabouts term the good people ‘Pharisees’ and style these emerald circles ‘Hagtracks.’  Why, we care not to enquire.  Enough for us, the fairies are not altogether gone.  A smooth soft carpet is here spread out for Oberon and Titania and their attendant elves, to dance upon by moonlight....” (Ainsworth:  Ovingdean Grange.)