de"; each
consists of five rooms, two below and three above, reached by a
staircase, the whole approached from a passage closed by a door giving
on to the Great Cloister. Here live and pray some thirty-six monks,
with a like number of conversi or lay-brothers.

I do not know in all England a place more peaceful than this one, more
solemn and salutary to visit in the confusion of our modern life. Here
is one of the lightning conductors that preserves the modern world
from the wrath of God. Let others think as they will, for me the
monastery of St Hugh in the Weald is holy ground.

And at any rate, even though you may not agree with me so far, in this
at least I shall carry you with me, when I say that this monastery,
and especially because it is Carthusian, bears out the old character
of the Weald and endorses it. I have said the Weald was ever a wild
and inhuman place where only few men could go together, without great
towns and with only infrequent villages; not a thick or impenetrable
woodland but a difficult and a lonely country sparsely scattered with
steadings. Well, it is such places that the Carthusians have ever
sought out for their houses, such was Witham and such was the Grande
Chartreuse also. That a Carthusian monastery should have been founded
to-day in the midst of the Weald proves, if anything can, that it has
not yet wholly lost its character.

CHAPTER XIV

TO ARUNDEL AND CHICHESTER

From my little quiet retreat at Edburton, I set out one May morning to
follow the road under the Downs, through Steyning for Arundel and
Chichester, because it is one of the fairest ways in all the world,
and, rightly understood, one of the most interesting. And to begin
with, I found myself crossing one of those gaps in the South Downs,
each of which is held by a castle. The one I now crossed was that made
by the Adur, and it was held by the Castle of Bramber.

Now Bramber, merely beautiful to-day, must in the old times always have
been of importance, for it holds an easy road through the rampart of
the Downs, one of the great highways into Normandy, because of the
harbour of Shoreham at the mouth of the Adur, one of the principal
ports upon this coast. Of immemorial antiquity, the harbour of
Shoreham, first of Old Shoreham, perhaps the Roman Portus Adurni, and
then when that silted up of New, has played always a great part in the
history of South England. That the Romans knew and used it is certain.
It was