these happy little hills and dales, and whose novel,
_The 'Half Moon'_, gives such a faithful picture of Rye of ancient
days. The following fragment from one of his poems gives the marsh in
all its beauty:

"Up here, where the air's very clear,
And the hills slope away nigh down to the bay,
It is very like Heaven....

"For the sea's wine-purple and lies half asleep
In the sickle of the shore and, serene in the west,
Lion-like purple and brooding in the even,
Low hills lure the sun to rest.

"Very like Heaven.... For the vast marsh dozes,
And waving plough-lands and willowy closes
Creep and creep up the soft south steep;
In the pallid North the grey and ghostly downs do fold away.
And, spinning spider-threadlets down the sea, the sea-lights dance,
And shake out a wavering radiance...."

We close with a short passage from the volume on the Cinque Ports. It
was written concerning the old military canal at Winchelsea, but in its
brooding spirit of contentment it applies but little less to the whole
of this wonderful area. "Nowhere is one so absolutely alone; but
nowhere do inanimate things--the water plants and the lichens on the
stiles--afford so much company. It must not be hurried through, or it
is a dull, flat stretch. But linger and saunter through it, and you
are caught by the heels in a moment. You will catch a malady of
tranquillity--a kind of idle fever that will fall on you in distant
places for years after. And one must needs be the better, in times of
storm and stress, for that restful remembrance."

End of Project Gutenberg's Hastings and Neighbourhood, by Walter Higgins

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