g as Winchelsea and Rye; and in certain reposeful moods, when
the past seems to be more than the present or future, I can agree with
them. We have seen many ancient towns in our progress through the
county--Chichester around her cathedral spire, Arundel beneath her grey
castle, Lewes among her hills--but all have modern blood in their veins.
Winchelsea and Rye seem wholly of the past. Nothing can modernise them.

Rye approached from the east is the suddenest thing in the world. The
traveller leaves Ashford, in a South Eastern train, amid all the
circumstances of ordinary travel; he passes through the ordinary scenery
of Kent; the porters call Rye, and in a moment he is in the middle ages.

Rye is only a few yards from its station: Winchelsea, on the other hand,
is a mile from the line, and one has time on the road to understand
one's surroundings. It is important that the traveller who wishes to
experience the right medieval thrill should come to Winchelsea either at
dusk or at night. To make acquaintance with any new town by night is to
double one's pleasure; for there is a first joy in the curious half-seen
strangeness of the streets and houses, and a further joy in correcting
by the morrow's light the distorted impressions gathered in the dark.

[Illustration: _The Landgate, Rye._]

[Sidenote: APPROACH AT DUSK]

To come for the first time upon Winchelsea at dusk, whether from the
station or from Rye, is to receive an impression almost if not quite
unique in England; since there is no other town throned like this upon a
green hill, to be gained only through massive gateways. From the station
one would enter at the Pipewell Gate; from Rye, by the Strand Gate. The
Strand approach is perhaps a shade finer and more romantically unreal.

[Sidenote: THE FREAKISH SEA]

Winchelsea and Rye are remarkable in being not only perched each upon a
solitary hillock in a vast level or marsh, but in being hillocks in
themselves. In the case of Winchelsea there are trees and green spaces
to boot, but Rye and its hillock are one; every inch is given over to
red brick and grey stone. They are true cities of the plain. Between
them are three miles of flat meadow, where, among thousands of sheep,
stands the grey rotundity of Camber Castle. All this land is _polder_,
as the Dutch call it, yet not reclaimed from the sea by any feat of
engineering, as about the Helder, but presented by Neptune as a free and
not too welcome gift to these