io8 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



resemblance to Exmoor ; you may walk, or you may 

 ride, for hours and meet no one ; and if black game were 

 to start up it would not surprise you in the least. There 

 seems room enough to chase the red stag from Buck- 

 hurst Park with horn and hound till, mayhap, he ended 

 in the sea at Pevensey. Buckhurst Park is the centre 

 of this immense manor. Of old time the deer did run 

 wild, and were hunted till the pale was broken in the 

 great Civil War. The ' Forest ' is still in every one's 

 mouth — ' on the Forest,' * by the Forest,' ' in ' it, or 

 'over' it, everything comes from the 'Forest,' even 

 stone to mend the roads, or ' through the Forest,' as up 

 from Brighton. People say this farm used to be forest, 

 or this garden or this house was the first built on the 

 forest. The enclosures are small, and look as if they 

 had been hewn out of wood or stubbed out of heather, 

 and there are numbers of small owners or settlers. 

 Here and there a house stands, as it seems, alone in the 

 world on the Forest ridge, thousands of acres of heather 

 around, the deep weald underneath — as at Duddleswell, 

 a look-out, as it were, over the earth. Forest Row, 

 where they say the courtiers had their booths in ancient 

 hunting days ; Forest Fold, Boar's-head Street, Green- 

 wood Gate — all have a forest sound ; and what prettier 

 name could there be than Sweet-Haws ? Greybirchet 

 Wood, again ; Mossbarn, Highbroom, and so on. Out- 

 lying woods in every direction are fragments of the 

 forest, you cannot get away from it ; and look over what- 

 ever gate you will, there is always a view. In the vale, 

 if you look over a gate you only see that field and 

 nothing beyond ; the view is bounded by the opposite 

 hedge. Here there is always a deep coombe, or the top 

 of a wood underneath, or a rising slope, or a distant 

 ridge crowned with red-tiled farmstead, red-coned oast- 



