The Open Air 



open. Primroses were late there, a high district and 

 thin soil ; you could read of them as found elsewhere 

 in January; they rarely came much before March, 

 and but sparingly then. On the warm red sand (red, 

 at least, to look at, but green by geological courtesy, 

 I think) of Sussex, round about Hurst of the Pierre- 

 points, primroses are seen soon after the year has 

 turned. In the lanes about that curious old mansion, 

 with its windows reaching from floor to roof, that 

 stands at the base of Wolstanbury Hill, they grow 

 early, and ferns linger in sheltered overhung banks. 

 The South Down range, like a great wall, shuts off 

 the sea, and has a different climate on either hand; 

 south by the sea hard, harsh, flowerless, almost 

 grassless, bitter, and cold; on the north side, just over 

 the hill warm, soft, with primroses and fern, willows 

 budding and birds already busy. It is a double 

 England there, two countries side by side. 



On a summer's day Wolstanbury Hill is an island 

 in sunshine ; you may lie on the grassy rampart, high 

 up in the most delicate air Grecian air, pellucid 

 alone, among the butterflies and humming bees at 

 the thyme, alone and isolated; endless masses of hills 

 on three sides, endless weald or valley on the fourth; 

 all warmly lit with sunshine, deep under liquid sun- 

 shine like the sands under the liquid sea, no harsh- 

 ness of man-made sound to break the insulation amid 

 nature, on an island in a far Pacific of sunshine. 

 Some people would hesitate to walk down the stair- 

 case cut in the turf to the beech-trees beneath; the 

 woods look so small beneath, so far down and steep, 

 and no handrail. Many go to the Dyke, but none to 

 Wolstanbury Hill. To come over the range reminds 

 one of what travellers say of coming over the Alps 

 into Italy; from harsh sea-slopes, made dry with salt 



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