98 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



windmills, half of them cashiered by foreign im- 

 portations, making landmarks like lighthouses or 

 seafarers' beacons, and storm-tried and twisted 

 firs. Again at your service are harder sandstone 

 — ferruginous, often quarters good to grow any- 

 thing, and leading up in series to high elevated, 

 heather-clad hills, wild and poor as many a York- 

 shire wold or Scotch moor, and for all we know 

 rich in minerals ; certainly holding plenty of iron. 

 Through the brook-lands, where the Ouse was 

 once a vast lagoon to Newhaven, the sea peeps 

 up between Newhaven's head and the white 

 Scars of Seaford. Villages by the dozen, mostly 

 no bigger than a hundred years ago ; hamlets by 

 the gross, certainly smaller ; parks and manor 

 houses ; old and new churches, flint and tile 

 churches, brick and ragstone, and churches buried 

 in ivy. Churches with shingle spires, churches 

 thatched and walled with limestone blocks, tall 

 stone ones, all sorts and sizes, except great, but 

 mostly too many for the existing population — not 

 to say congregation — dot the wide area. Many 

 enough to half excuse the poor old devil who 

 always gets cheated in trying to dig a canal to let 

 the sea through and drown out the garrisons of 

 these forts and picket-houses. 



All the country-side was calling in familiar 

 voices as I expect it called old John Home when 

 he made up his mind that the sensible man's con- 

 ventional wants are few and the luxury of free 

 elbow-room, fresh air, and exercise necessities. 

 Tempted I was to cut work and do myself a 

 power of good ranging as chance or fancy directed. 

 Instead of which I ''minded my book" and made 

 believe to be content with a trifling turn next day 

 round Lewes's big chalk detached lump of down 



