it, he
asked the vicar with well affected or real concern, that whenever he had
had too much to drink he felt more religious than at any other time?

The Burwash records indeed go far to redeem Sussex men from the epithet
"silly," which is traditionally theirs. Concerning this old taunt, I
like the rector's remarks in _Idlehurst_. The phrase, he says, "is
better after all than 'canny owd Cummerlan'' or calling ourselves 'free
and enlightened citizens' or 'heirs to all the ages.' But suppose Sussex
as silly as you like, the country wants a large preserve of fallow
brains; you can't manure the intellect for close cropping. Isn't it
Renan who attributes so much to solid Breton stupidity in his
ancestors?" I notice that Mr. H. G. Wells, in his very interesting book,
_Mankind in the Making_, is in support of this suggestion. The
_Idlehurst_ rector, in contrasting Londoners with Sussex folk,
continues: "The Londoner has all his strength in the front line: one can
never tell what reserves the countryman may not deploy in his slow way."
(Some old satirist of the county had it that the crest of the true
Sussex peasant is a pig couchant, with the motto "I wunt be druv." I
give this for what it is worth.)

[Sidenote: SUSSEX RESERVES]

It is to be doubted if any county has a monopoly of silliness. The fault
of Sussex people rather is to lack reserves, not of wisdom but of
effort. You see this in cricket, where although the Sussex men have done
some of the most brilliant things in the history of the game (even
before the days of their Oriental ally), they have probably made a
greater number of tame attempts to cope with difficulties than any other
eleven. For the "staying of a rot" Sussex has had but few
qualifications. The cricket test is not everything: but character tells
there just as in any other employment. Burwash, however, must be
exempted from this particular charge, for, whatever its form may be
now, its eleven had once a terrible reputation. I find in the county
paper for 1771 an advertisement to the effect that Burwash, having
"challenged all its neighbours without effect," invites a match with any
parish whatsoever in all Sussex.

[Sidenote: THE DONKEY RACE]

Mr. Egerton was not the first parson to record the manners of the
Burwash parishioner. The Rev. James Hurdis, curate there towards the end
of the preceding century, and afterwards Professor of Poetry at Oxford
(we saw his grave at Bishopstone), had written a