s through
Sussex to take the same route: he would probably prefer to cover the
county literally strip by strip--the Forest strip from Tunbridge Wells
to Horsham, the Weald strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downs
strip from Racton to Beachy Head--rather than follow my course, north to
south, and south to north, across the land. But the book is, I think,
the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, for
they bring him again and again back to the Downs.

It is impossible at this date to write about Sussex, in accordance with
the plan of the present series, without saying a great many things that
others have said before, and without making use of the historians of the
county. To the collections of the Sussex Archaeological Society I am
greatly indebted; also to Mr. J. G. Bishop's _Peep into the Past_, and
to Mr. W. D. Parish's _Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect_. Many other
works are mentioned in the text.

The history, archaeology, and natural history of the county have been
thoroughly treated by various writers; but there are, I have noticed,
fewer books than there should be upon Sussex men and women. Carlyle's
saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish
(which one might amend to the history of his parishioners) has borne too
little fruit in our district; nor have lay observers arisen in any
number to atone for the shortcoming. And yet Sussex must be as rich in
good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or noble, as any other
division of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex men
and women, the late Mark Antony Lower played his part with _The Worthies
of Sussex_, and Mr. Fleet with _Glimpses of Our Sussex Ancestors_; but
the Sussex "Characters," where are they? Who has set down their "little
unremembered acts," their eccentricities, their sterling southern
tenacities? The Rev. A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harting, and
quite recently the Rev. C. N. Sutton has published his interesting
_Historical Notes of Withyham, Hartfield, and Ashdown Forest_; and there
may be other similar parish histories which I am forgetting. But the
only books that I have seen which make a patient and sympathetic
attempt to understand the people of Sussex are Mr. Parish's
_Dictionary_, Mr. Egerton's _Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways_, and "John
Halsham's" _Idlehurst_. How many rare qualities of head and heart must
go unrecorded in rural England.

I have to thank my friend Mr.