The city walls are not far distant; though not continuous, considerable portions have been laid out as public promenades.  They are for the most part constructed of flints and undoubtedly have a Roman base.  Some lines of fortifications about a mile north of the walls, locally called the “Broyles,” are supposed to be Roman works, possibly in connexion with the military station or garrison.

Returning to the city’s centre at the Cross, St. Andrew’s Church in East Street may be visited; this has a Roman pavement at a depth of about five feet.  The poet Collins is buried within the church.  Note the slab on the outside wall which up to the present has kept its secret from archaeologists.

A very interesting museum in South Street contains a quantity of local finds.  Particular note should be made of the pottery removed from a British tomb at Walberton; also of the curious old lantern called the “moon,” formerly carried in municipal processions after dark.

The “Pallant,” a corruption of Palatinate, was once an ecclesiastical peculiar; it consists of four streets between South and East Streets.  In West Street is the Prebendal school at which Selden commenced his education.  This street has a very fine specimen of seventeenth-century architecture, built by Wren and dated 1696.  There are several good old residences of about this date in South Street.

CHAPTER X

SELSEY AND BOSHAM

Chichester Harbour ends just west of the town and close to the Portsmouth high road at New Fishbourne, a pleasant little place with a restored Early English church.  This may be said to be the north-western limit of the Selsey Peninsula, one of the most primitive corners of southern England.  The few visitors who make use of the light railway to Selsey have little or no knowledge of the lonely hamlets scattered over the wind-swept flats, in which many old customs linger and where the Saxon dialect may be heard in all its purity.

[Illustration:  THE LOWLANDS.]

Selsey—­“Seals’ Island"[2]—­was the scene of the first conversions to Christianity in Sussex and, for this reason, a semi-sacred land to the early mediaeval church in the south.

    [2] Two seals were seen on the west of the Selsea Peninsula in
    December, 1919, and one of them was shot for preservation in a
    local museum.

St. Wilfrid’s first visit was unpremeditated; he was shipwrecked while returning from a visit to France, where his consecration had taken place in A.D. 665.  His reception was so hostile that after getting safely away he decided to return at some future date and convert the Barbarians to more gentle ways.  Not for fifteen years did his opportunity come.  Then, despoiled of his northern bishopric, for Wilfrid was a turbulent Churchman, he came prepared, we must suppose, for the reception usually meted out to the saints in those days.  The heathen Saxons, however,