he Vale of Heathfield," painted from a
point above the road, with Heathfield House on the left, the tower on
the right, the church in the centre in the middle distance, and the sea
on the horizon: an impressive but not strictly veracious landscape.

In Brightling church is a bust to John Fuller, with the motto: "Utile
nihil quod non honestum." A rector in Fuller's early days was William
Hayley, who died in 1789, a zealous antiquary. His papers relating to
the history of Sussex, are now, like those of Sir William Burrell, in
the British Museum.

Our next village is Burwash, three miles in the north, built, like all
the villages in this switchback district, on a hill. We are now,
indeed, well in the heart of the fatiguing country which we touched at
Mayfield, where one eminence is painfully won only to reveal another.
One can be as parched on a road in the Sussex hop country as in the
Arabian desert. The eye, however, that is tired of hop poles and hills
can find sweet gratification in the cottages. Sussex has charming
cottages from end to end of her territory, but I think the hop district
on the Kentish side has some of the prettiest. Blackberries too may be
set down among the riches of the sand-hill villages.

[Sidenote: SUPERSTITIONS]

In Richard Jefferies' essay, "The Country-side: Sussex" (in _Field and
Hedgerow_), describing this district of the country, is an amusing
passage touching superstitions of these parts, picked up during hopping:

"In and about the kiln I learned that if you smash a frog with a stone,
no matter how hard you hit him, he cannot die till sunset. You must be
careful not to put on any new article of clothing for the first time on
a Saturday, or some severe punishment will ensue. One person put on his
new boots on a Saturday, and on Monday broke his arm. Some still believe
in herbs, and gather wood-betony for herb tea, or eat dandelion leaves
between slices of dry toast. There is an old man living in one of the
villages who has reached the age of a hundred and sixty years, and still
goes hop-picking. Ever so many people had seen him, and knew all about
him; an undoubted fact, a public fact; but I could not trace him to his
lair. His exact whereabouts could not be fixed. I live in hopes of
finding him in some obscure 'Hole' yet (many little hamlets are 'Holes,'
as Froghole, Foxhole). What an exhibit for London! Did he realise his
own value, he would soon come forth. I joke, but the existence