of this
antique person is firmly believed in."

Burwash is one of the few Sussex villages that has been made the subject
of a book. The Rev. John Coker Egerton's _Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways_
(from which I have already occasionally quoted) was written here,
around materials collected during the author's period as rector of
Burwash. Mr. Egerton was curate of Burwash from 1857 to 1862, and from
1865 to 1867, when he became rector and remained in the living until his
death in 1888. His book is a kindly collection of the shrewd and
humorous sayings of his Sussex parishioners, anecdotes of characteristic
incidents, records of old customs now passing or passed away--the whole
fused by the rector's genial personality.

[Sidenote: PARTY POLITICS]

It is to Burwash and Mr. Egerton that we owe some characteristic scraps
of Sussex philosophy. Thus, Mr. Egerton tells of an old conservative
whose advice to young men was this: "Mind you don't never have nothing
in no way to do with none of their new-fangled schemes." Another Sussex
cynic defined party government with grim impartiality: "Politics are
about like this: I've got a sow in my yard with twelve little uns, and
they little uns can't all feed at once, because there isn't room enough;
so I shut six on 'em out of the yard while tother six be sucking, and
the six as be shut out, they just do make a hem of a noise till they be
let in; and then they be just as quiet as the rest."

The capacity of the Sussex man to put his foot down and keep it there,
is shown in the refusal of Burwash to ring the bells when George IV.,
then Prince of Wales, passed through the village on his return to
Brighton from a visit to Sir John Lade at Etchingham; the reason given
being that the First Gentleman in Europe when rung in on his way to Sir
John's had said nothing about beer. This must have been during one of
the Prince's peculiarly needy periods, for the withholding of strong
drink from his friends was never one of his failings. Another Burwash
radical used to send up to the rectory with a message that he was about
to gather fruit and the rector must send down for the tithe. The
rector's man would go down--and receive one gooseberry from a basket of
ten: all that was to be gathered that day.

Another Burwash man posed his vicar more agreeably and humorously in
another manner. Finding him a little in liquor the pastor would have
warned him against the habit, but the man was too quick. How was