A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 3 



unacquainted. In Sussex we do not possess these 

 differentia* An odd transitional state between the 

 old rural economy and a pervading plutocracy has 

 apparently produced a rather respectable and soulless 

 population, protected in its morals by a singular vis 

 inertia, and speaking almost universally that dreadful 

 New English which flows from Thames about the world. 

 Under the attrition of London on the one side 

 and Brighton on the other, we are taking upon us 

 a general polish, and losing all individual character. 

 With hardly an exception, the old great families 

 of the county are extinct and their houses have 

 passed into the hands of the bankers, the stockbrokers, 

 the distillers. The names which abide are the 

 common people's the Bottings and Tomsetts that 

 fill our registers of 1557. There live in Arnington 

 to-day three generations of Thomas Pococks ; and a 

 Thomas Pocok appears in the roll of the Sussex 

 archers who were at Agincourt. But beyond the 

 names, little abides. Uniformity of school-methods 

 is wearing down any small excrescences of individual 

 character ; the very forces of heredity seem power- 

 less beneath the flattening weight of the Standards. 

 Almost every recent legislative change has helped to 

 obliterate the ancient distinctions ; with a certain 

 class of our village politicians the effacing of the old 



