but by
amateurs no less unwilling to give an ignorant peasant fifteen
shillings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But
suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say,
begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country
are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is
always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me
that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a
recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An
oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman
can give it (and the profession of wormholer, is now, I believe,
recognised) is deposited in a tumble-down, half-timbered home in a
country village, whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game;
a ticket marked "Ginger-beer; sold Here" is placed in the window, and
the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids
for this chest, which has, of course, been in the family for
generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just; it
is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as
the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter.

[Illustration: _Chanctonbury Ring._]

CHAPTER XVI

CHANCTONBURY, WASHINGTON, AND WORTHING

Chanctonbury Ring--The planter of the beeches--The Gorings--Thomas
Fuller on the Three Shirleys--Ashington's chief--Warminghurst and
the phantasm--Washington--An expensive mug of beer--Findon--A
champion pluralist--Cissbury--John Selden's wit and wisdom--Thomas
a Becket's figs--Worthing's precious climate--Sompting church.

For nothing within its confines is Steyning so famous as for the hill
which rises to the south-west of it--Chanctonbury Ring. Other of the
South Downs are higher, other are more commanding: Wolstonbury, for
example, standing forward from the line, makes a bolder show, and Firle
Beacon daunts the sky with a braver point; but when one thinks of the
South Downs as a whole it is Chanctonbury that leaps first to the
inward eye. Chanctonbury, when all is said, is the monarch of the range.

The words of the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a
summer abroad, express the feeling of many of his countrymen:--

For howsoever fair the land,
The time would surely be
That brought our Wealden blackbird's note
Acr