224 IDLEHURST : 



odds and ends as the extinction of steam roundabouts, 

 tail-lights for timber waggons, and the needs of roads 

 and drains. Our County Council is perhaps a little 

 ambitious, is still making the clean sweeps of the new 

 broom : but at least it has work to do ; it does not 

 adjourn for fisticuffs : the Radical tongue- itch has not 

 affected it at present. As we came into Lewes, I 

 thought that when Biles and his friends, verbose, raw, 

 undrilled in the great world, displace at the County 

 Council our General and his comrades, we shall be in 

 the last days. Meanwhile, the present dispensation 

 of Government has elements of an assuring kind. 



Up one of the break-neck lanes from the station 

 to the Castle Hill, and do my business with my 

 attorney in a still little office shut off by its wire 

 blind from the changeful world ; in its dusty light, 

 its brown book-shelves and slow-ticking clock, year 

 to year the same. Then I rambled about the town, 

 from the top of the hill down the prone street to 

 the river-level ; turning into the lanes that run 

 southward Watergate, Castlegate, St. Andrews and 

 show remainders of old timbering and gable-ends in 

 odd perspectives on the steep incline. 



At last I came through the Cliffe to that steep 

 down by the great chalkpits, and climbed the face 

 of it by the rough stairs of the sheep-tracks scored 



