ished about 1800, came into the writer's hands
recently. The whole of the gentler hills, including every possible
vantage point in the Downs, had been most carefully and neatly marked
with the panorama visible from the summit; but even Kinder Scout and
the Malverns came in for the same fate as the Welsh and Cumberland
mountains, all of which had been left severely alone, though the
intrepid traveller had braved the terrors of the Wrekin, 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