AUTUMN 215 



Sussex iron workers so greatly altered it. One needs 

 but to gaze on the scene, then close the eyes, and the 

 gaps and the straight lines of hedge and fence, and 

 the white and red spots of walls and roofs, and white 

 puff of steam swiftly vanish, swallowed up or blotted 

 out in the boundless expanse of deep uniform green, 

 the unbroken forest of Andredsweald, as the Saxons 

 and the Romans before them saw it from their en- 

 campments on the downs, and as William Hay, of 

 Glyndbourne, described it a century ago in his Mount 

 Cahurn — 



All was one wild inhospitable waste, 

 Uncouth and horrid, desert and untraced, 

 Hid by rough thickets from the face of day, 

 The solitary realms of beasts of prey ; 



too gloomy for the nightingale to sing there, and too 

 wet and cold and dark for the heat and light loving 

 adder to have a home in it. 



The hills in this clear autumn weather, familiar as 

 their forms are and often as we have walked on them, 

 seem almost like a new region to the eye, known and 

 yet novel ; the preternatural distinctness and near- 

 ness of the heights around us produce the illusion 

 that we ourselves have changed to something better 

 and higher, and have a more piercing sight and 

 greater power and swiftness. It is as if like Mercury 

 we had wings on our heels, and are able to move with 

 a freedom never before known. Thus, in September, 

 I at length begin to see men cantering over the open 



