OF SELBORNE. 157 



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 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, pro- 

 perly speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you 

 command a noble view of the wild, or weald, on one hand, 

 and the broad downs and sea on the other. Mr. Ray used to 

 visit a family d just at the foot of these hills, and was so 

 ravished with the prospect from Plumpton-plain near Lewes, 

 that he mentions those scapes in his " Wisdom of God in the 

 Works of the Creation " with 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 peculiarly 

 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 con- 

 template these mountains without thinking I perceive some- 

 what analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and 

 smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and 

 regular hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of 



vegetative dilatation and expansion Or was there 



ever a time when these immense masses of calcarious matter 

 were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious moisture; 

 were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic 

 power; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into 

 the sky so much above the less animated clay of the wild 

 below ? 



By what I can guess from the admeasurements of the hills 

 that have been taken round my house, I should suppose that 

 these hills surmount the wild at an average at about the rate 

 of five hundred feet. 



d Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



