OF SELBORNE. | 195 
more minute inquiry into natural history—into the 
life and conversation of animals. Perhaps, here. 
after, [ may be induced to take the house-swallow 
under consideration, and from that proceed to the 
rest of the British hirundines. 
Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs 
upward of thirty years, yet I still investigate that 
chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration 
year by year, and I think I see new beauties every 
time I traverse it. This range, which runs from 
Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is about 
sixty miles in length, and is called the South 
Downs, properly speaking, only round Lewes. As 
you pass along, you command a noble view of the 
wold or weald on one hand, and the broad downs 
and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to visit a 
family* just at the foot of these hills, and was so 
ravished with the prospect from Plympton Plain, 
near Lewes, that he mentions those capes in his 
“ Wisdom of God in the Works of the Creation” 
with the utmost satisfaction, and thinks them equal 
to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Eu- 
rope. 
For my own part, I think there is somewhat pe- 
culiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely-figured 
aspect of chalk-hills in preference to those of 
stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shape- 
Jess. 
Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and 
not so happy as to convey to you the same idea ; 
but I never contemplate these mountains without 
thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth 
* Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 
