triumphs of Henry VIII. by Holbein. In the long
gallery were the Twelve Apostles "as large as life"; while the marriage
of Cupid and Psyche, a tableau that never failed to please our
ancestors, was not wanting.

The glory of the Montagus has utterly passed. The present Earl of Egmont
is either an absentee or he lives in a cottage near the gates; and the
new house, which is hidden in trees, is of no interest. The park,
however, is still ranged by its beautiful deer, and still possesses an
avenue of chestnut trees and rolling wastes of turf. It is everywhere as
free as a heath.

CHAPTER II

MIDHURST'S VILLAGES

Hanging in chains--A wooded paradise--Fernhurst--Shulbrede
Priory--Blackdown--Tennyson's Sussex home--Thomas Otway--Kate
Hotspur's Grave--A Sussex ornithologist--The friend of
owls--William Cobbett looks at the Squire--The charms of South
Harting--Lady Mary Caryll's little difficulties--Gilbert White in
Sussex--The old field routine--Witchcraft at South Harting--The
Rother--Easebourne--West Lavington and Cardinal Manning.

The road from Midhurst to Blackdown ascends steadily to Henley,
threading vast woods and preserves. On the left is a great common, on
the right North Heath, where the two Drewitts were hanged in chains
after being executed at Horsham, in 1799, for the robbery of the
Portsmouth mail--probably the last instance of hanging in chains in this
country. For those that like wild forest country there was once no
better ramble than might be enjoyed here; but now (1903) that the King's
new sanatorium is being built in the midst of Great Common, some of the
wildness must necessarily be lost. A finer site could not have been
found. Above Great Common is a superb open space nearly six hundred feet
high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one
studies the Fernhurst valley, the Haslemere heights and, blue in the
distance, the North Downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the
country we are now in.

A few minutes' walk to the east from this lofty common, and we are
immediately above Henley, clinging to the hill side, an almost Alpine
hamlet. Henley, however, no longer sees the travellers that once it did,
for the coach road, which of old climbed perilously through it, has been
diverted in a curve through the hanger, and now sweeps into Fernhurst by
way of Henley Common.

[Illustration: _Blackdown._]

[Sidenote: FERNHURST]