188 SUSSEX DOWNS. 



house-swallow under consideration ; and from that 

 proceed to the rest of the British hirundines. 



Though I have now travelled the Sussex Downs 

 upwards of thirty years, yet I still investigate that 

 chain of majestic mountains with fresh admira- 

 tion year by year ; and I think I see new heauties 

 every time I traverse it. This range, which runs 

 from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, 

 is about sixty miles in length, and is called the 

 South Downs, properly speaking, only round 

 Lewes. As you pass along, you command a 

 noble view of the wold, or weald, on one hand, 

 and the broad downs and sea, on the other. Mr. 

 Ray used to visit a family 1 just at the foot of 

 these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect 

 from Plympton-plain, near Lewes, that he men- 

 tions those capes in his " Wisdom of God in 

 the Works of the Creation," with the utmost 

 satisfaction, and thinks them equal to any thing he 

 had seen in the finest parts of Europe. 



For my own part, I think there is somewhat 

 peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely - 

 figured aspect of chalk hills in preference to 

 those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, 

 and shapeless. 



Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and 

 not so happy as to convey to you the same idea; 

 but I never contemplate these mountains without 

 thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth 

 in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus -like 

 protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular 

 hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of 

 vegetative dilatation and expansion Or, was 

 there ever a time when these immense masses of 

 calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation 



1 Mr. Courthope, of Danny. 



