said, like
Billingsgate, after Belinus, Stane Street's engineer. At Pulborough we
must cut across country to the camp by Hardham, over water meadows that
are too often flooded, and thence, through other fields, arable and
pasture, to the hostel on Bignor Hill, which once was Stane Street;
passing on the right Mr. Tupper's farm and the field which contains the
famous Bignor pavements, relic of the palatial residence of the Governor
of the Province of Regnum in the Romans' day; or better still, pausing
there, as Roman officers faring to Regnum certainly would in the hope of
a cup of Falernian.

The track winding up Bignor Hill is still easily recognisable, and from
the summit half Sussex is visible: the flat blue weald in the north,
Blackdown's dark escarpment in the north-west, Arundel's shaggy wastes
in the east, the sea and the plain in the south, and the rolling turf of
the downs all around. Henceforward the road is again straight, nine
unfaltering miles to Chichester, which we enter by St. Pancras and East
Street. For the first four miles, however, the track is over turf and
among woods, Eartham Wood on the right and North Wood on the left, and,
after a very brief spell of hard road again, over the side of Halnaker
Down. But from Halnaker to Chichester it is turnpike once more, with the
savour of the Channel meeting one all the way, and Chichester's spire a
friendly beacon and earnest of the contiguous delights of the Dolphin,
where one may sup in an assembly room spacious enough to hold a Roman
century.

[Sidenote: BY ROMAN ROAD]

Or one might reverse the order and walk out of Sussex into London by the
Roman way, or, better still, through London, and on by Erming Street to
the wall of Antoninus. Merely to walk to London and there stop is
nothing; merely to walk from London is little; but to walk through
London ... there is glamour in that! To come bravely up from the sea at
Bosham, through Chichester, over the Downs to the sweet domestic
peaceful green weald, over the Downs again and plunge into the grey city
(perhaps at night) and out again on the other side into the green again,
and so to the north, _left-right_, _left-right_, just as the clanking
Romans did; that would be worth doing and worth feeling.

[Sidenote: JOHN HORNE]

The best knower of Sussex of recent times has died since this book was
printed: one who knew her footpaths and spinneys, her hills and farms,
as a scholar knows his library. John Horn