SUSSEX DOWNS. 181 



life and conversation of animals. Perhaps, hereafter, 

 I 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 

 upwards 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 Ply nipt on -plain, near Lewes, that 

 he mentions those capes in his Wisdom of God in the 

 Works of the Creation, witlj. the utmost satisfaction, 

 and thinks them equal to any thing he had seen in 

 the finest parts of Europe. 



For my own part, I think there is somewhat pecu- 

 liarly sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect 

 of chalk hills, in preference to those of stone, which 

 are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. 



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 in their 

 gentle swellings and smooth fungus -like protuber- 

 ances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and 

 slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilata- 

 tion and expansion : or, was there ever a time when 

 these immense masses of calcareous matter were 

 thrown into fermentation by some adventitious mois- 



* Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



