happy at every step
northward.

[Sidenote: THE INVIOLATE HILLS]

One cause of the unique character of the Sussex Downs is their virginal
security, their unassailable independence. They stand, a silent
undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the
seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom
Sussex has a special attraction by reason of its proximity (Brighton's
beach is the nearest to the capital in point of time), either pause
north of the Downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles, or in
carriages, to the sea. Houses there are among the Downs, it is true, but
they are old-established, the homes of families that can remember no
other homes. There is as yet no fashion for residences in these
altitudes. Until that fashion sets in (and may it be far distant) the
Downs will remain essential Sussex, and those that love them will
exclaim with Mr. Kipling,

God gave all men all earth to love,
But since man's heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.

* * * * *

Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground--in a fair ground--
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

[Sidenote: MIDHURST]

If we are to begin our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is
the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet
country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a
river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and
the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the
centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having only a
single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, never annoys
him by disfiguring the country or letting loose upon it crowds of
vandals. Single lines always mean thinly populated country. As a
pedestrian poet has sung:--

My heart leaps up when I behold
A single railway line;
For then I know the wood and wold
Are almost wholly mine.

And Midhurst being on no great high road is nearly always quiet. Nothing
ever hurries there. The people live their own lives, passing along their
few narrow streets and the one broad one, under the projecting eaves of
timbered houses, unrecking of London and the world. Sussex has no more
contented town.

The church, which belongs really to St. Mary Magdalen, but i