4 IDLEHURST : 



inscriptions seems almost a religion. Whatsoever the 

 merits of the emerging Cosmos may be, monotony of 

 the most tyrannous kind must follow the present 

 course of development. 



Under these conditions of change the chief interest 

 lies in watching the collision between old and new ; 

 in finding survivals and tracing links with a far off 

 past ; in the refreshing worth and salt of the passing 

 generation, which after a few more winters will be 

 wholly gone. There are differences of standpoint 

 between aged labourers in Arnington and their 

 grandsons, greater perhaps than the same interval 

 of generation could show in any part of the world's 

 history. The railroad embankments, as Thackeray 

 says, have shut off the old world that was behind 

 them. The rare survivors of the pre-railroad age 

 are almost as strange to us as a revived Jacobite or 

 Fifth-Monarchy man could be among us to-day. 

 And the interest of transition belongs, alas ! to the 

 scene as well as to the characters. 



Our Sussex landscape is naturally most beautiful ; 

 a landscape of wide horizons and splendid distances, 

 a mingling of heathy hills and valley meadows, 

 woodland and tillage, that can compare with any 

 champaign beneath the sun. But it is being steadily 

 and in great part irrevocably defiled. Places of 



