A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 22$ 



through the thin grass into the chalk. The whole 

 slope blooms thick with eye-bright, mauve scabious, 

 and wild parsley : overhead, as I toiled up, the edge 

 of the down cut the zenith, a most magnificent 

 contrast of light yellow, the flush of the tanned and 

 seeded grass, against pure azure, an opening in the 

 rolling clouds, crossed with a few fine threads of 

 white cirrus. I sat for an hour on the top in the 

 still, hot afternoon air, looking down upon those 

 dismal flats beneath the town, slashed and fouled 

 by acres of railway siding ; upon the curves of the 

 Ouse; upon the town piled high about the Castle, 

 seen through a haze of gold-coloured smoke. The 

 Downs surround the whole, showing here and there 

 the least hint of mountain character in their forms ; 

 between their scarped ends lies the blue airy distance 

 of the Weald. The cope of soft grey bellying clouds 

 shifts slowly from the south-west. The great expanse 

 of sky seen from this height gives full sense of the 

 motion of the whole heaven, a hemisphere a-sail, 

 with infinite changes within itself, perspective open- 

 ings-out, occultations and adumbrations. Beyond 

 Mount Harry the fading streak of a shower trails 

 across Chailey Common ; southwards by Newhaven 

 the sun is out upon a bar of numberless small, rounded 



Q 



