SUSSEX ROAD-LORE 109 



Age does the church in the Park — once hemmed 

 in, so says local authority, by cottages, now non- 

 apparent — show, but a rustic, green, well-cared-for 

 old age it is. Rest and peace you are offered all 

 about the domain, though you are forbidden to 

 go off the paths or roads, and you may not bring 

 bicycles or perambulators, neither may you 

 wander, picnic, nor saunter? Cruel is that last, 

 or would be, if Lord Liverpool's descendant 

 enforced the notice-board order. If ever a place 

 was designed for sauntering Buxted Park is, 

 more especially for a meditative man taking his 

 recreation wondering whether the spirit of quiet 

 was ever driven away by Messrs Ralph Hogge 

 and Co., smelters, gun-casters, and all the rest, 

 but returned, and whether if works are to take 

 their spell in due course Buxted Park is to be 

 like the northern ones I can quote — oases, green 

 spots in a desert of noise and fire and blackness. 



Both Sussex and Kent may be fortunate or 

 unfortunate as one pleases to value circumstances 

 enough to become most prosperously black some 

 day ; after my time, I hope, if postponement will 

 not hurt anyone. Sussex seems less likely of the 

 two to be converted (and, I may add, that 

 working its iron from the days of the Romans 

 down to 1825 has left it clean enough all the 

 same), but the neighbours' native prettiness is 

 against their chances of being left as they are, 

 for fate has ordained that beauty should in so 

 many cases carry the fatal concomitant of coal or 

 iron bearing. I know which aspect I like best 



