AN ENGLISH SHIRI^. 



For the reasons which liave determined the existence of 

 Sussex as a county of England, and which have given it 

 the exact boundaries that it now possesses, we must go 

 back to the remote geological history of the secondary 

 ages. Its limits and its very existence as a separate shire 

 were predetermined for it by the shape and consistence 

 of the mud or sand which gathei'ed at tlie bottom of the 

 great Wealden lake, or filled up the hollows of the old 

 inland cretaceous sea. Parodoxical as it sounds to say 

 so, the Celtic kingdom of the Regni, the South Saxon 

 principality of TElle the Bretwalda, the modern English 

 county of Sussex, have all had their destinies moulded 

 by the geological conformation of the rock upon which 

 they repose. Where human annals see only the handi- 

 craft and interaction of human beings — Euskarian and 

 Aryan, Celt and Roman, Englishman and Norman — a 

 closer scrutiny of history may perhaps see the working 

 of still deeper elements — chalk and clay, volcanic 

 upheaval and glacial denudation, barren upland and 

 forest-clad plain. The value and importance of these 

 underlying facts in the comprehension of history has, I 

 believe, been very generally overlooked ; and I propose 



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