184 
NATURE NOTES 
Many an afternoon during this delightful time has a seat 
upon a gate on the top of Compton Down given opportunity for 
autumn jottings, and none but the most inveterate lover of the 
city life could have failed to find some sort of interest. Artist 
or naturalist, sportsman or lover of the beautiful, can all have 
found something to their taste in this quiet spot. Here on the 
highest point of the Down is a coign of vantage whence the eye 
can travel southward over the woods and farms of South Hants, 
from the tree-clad slopes of Cranbury Park, down the Itchen 
Valley, towards the coast, where so many of our soldiers have 
just been embarking to serve Queen and country in our South 
African colonies ; eastwards across the valley to another range 
of downs ; northwards to Winchester, whose outskirts are just 
visible, creeping up the hills that hem in the ancient city, most 
noteworthy of them St. Catherine’s hill, with its clump of wind- 
swept beeches, a prominent feature in the landscape ; westwards 
towards the hollow where Hursley lies; and beyond that Farley 
mount and the woods round Ampfield. 
We are on historic ground. Up yonder valley of the Itchen 
pushed Cerdic and his invading forces to found the kingdom of 
Wessex, greatest of the early English kingdoms. Cerdic is a 
name we can never forget, for is it not the fact that he was the 
ancestor of that famous line of kings, whose present representa- 
tive, our most gracious sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, now 
fills the throne of England. And another famous name of days 
long gone by is inseparably connected with this spot, for in that 
ancient city of Winchester, so long the capital of the English 
land, the great and good King Alfred ruled the realm, which 
he had saved with so much patient bravery and skill from the 
invading hordes of heathen Danes. And when the thousandth 
anniversary of his death comes round in 1901, may Winchester 
and all England conspire to do honour to the memory of one of 
England’s greatest men, and England’s Church enrol in her 
calendar the name of one of England’s greatest saints. For 
Alfred was truly this, saint, as well as warrior, statesman, king. 
Far different is the judgment passed by his contemporaries, 
and confirmed by posterity, upon another king of whom the 
recollection comes to us. Along the road from Romsey, 
through Hursley to Winchester, would have come the charcoal- 
burners of the Forest, carrying the body of the Red King, found 
in so mysterious a way in the forest glades, dead from an arrow 
wound, his hunting party fled, not one to render the last offices 
to the King in whose suite they had gone forth to hunt in that 
Forest, which, not many years before, his father had placed 
under the operation of his Forest laws. 
And yet another name, of one of a far different class to these 
English and West Saxon kings, and of a recent time. Only a 
short distance away, hidden in the hollow of the surrounding 
woods, lies the little village of Hursley, made famous as the 
scene of the life-labours of that humble and saintly priest, John 
