Forsook their gloomy bowers, and wander'd far
abroad,
Expell'd their quiet seats and place of their abode,
When labouring carts they saw to hold their daily
trade
Where they in summer wont to sport them in the
shade.

All this is described by the poet as giving great
satisfaction to the Downs, which had envied the
Weald its leafy investiture; but the former are
reproved for their malice by the rivers,

Their fountains that derive from those unpitied
woods,
And so much grace the Downs as through their
dales they creep.

The soil all about these Downs is rich in
antiquities. The Britons appear to have had
several military entrenchments on the elevated
ridges, especially on Mount Caburn, near Lewes;
the Romans, too, had their stations and earthworks;
and antiquarian excavators have from
time to time been rewarded by turning up flint
and metal celts, cinerary urns, half-calcined
bones, glass vessels, personal adornments in
bronze, ivory, and porcelain, beads of amber and
jet, sword-blades, spear-heads, bosses of shields,
&c. At the little village of Milton Street, near
Alfriston, so great a hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins
was at one time discovered, that the collection
has been ever since distinguished as the
"Alfriston find;" and probably many remains of
ancient buildings might be brought to light if
the earth were sufficiently disturbed. So the
Downs have borne their part in history, and the
archæologist has reason to love and respect them.
But they are no less interesting to the naturalist
also. For here is to be found that singular
compromise between the animal and vegetable
kingdoms—the bee orchis; and in the summer months
the shepherds catch, by means of a rude trap
formed by excavations in the turf, immense
numbers of "the English ortolan," popularly called
the wheat-ear. These birds are so abundant, and
so easily snared, that one man has been known
to take as many as eighty-four dozen in a single
day. They are considered great delicacies, and
often make their appearance on the tables of the
rich.*

* For some of these local facts, the writer is
indebted to the Handbook for Lewes, by Mark Antony
Lower, M.A.

Here, lying in a sort of bay among the hills,
and comfortably shut in with trees, is Ovingdean,
as perfect a specimen of the tranquil old English
rural hamlet as you need behold, though not
above two miles from the huge sea-side
metropolis, Brighton. The day is falling as we reach
the little nest of houses and barns clustered about
the small old church; and the hush of the wide
outer Downs is on the place; and we think of
the old graves in the churchyard, and are quiet
too. How many houses might there be in this
dim and sleepy nook? More for the dead than
for the living, we will warrant; for the graveyard
represents many successive generations, and
on some of the mouldering tombstones we spell
out with much ado, dates that tell of centuries
long gone by. But there is an old Grange, with
some outbuildings older still attached to it; and
there is an old parsonage, with a garden attached
to it, leading by a close and leafy path into the
consecrated ground, down which path, you may
be sure, the clergyman comes on Sundays, ready
gowned for service; and there are some old
husbandmen lounging about, smoking; and there
is the old church, and there are the old graves;
and there is nothing else. So we stand, bathing
ourselves in the silence (which is the oldest thing
of all, making even your Pyramids of Egypt and
your rock-hewn temples seem very modern in
the comparison); and we admire the pretty
irregularity of the place—the houses dotted
about without any precise plan, the barns coming
in at their pleasure, and the embowering trees
and shrubs connecting and harmonising all. We
see these things lying under the inexpressible
tenderness of the soft September twilight; and
we hear the silence intensified, not broken, by
the rustle of the neighbouring leaves, and the
breathing of the distant sea. How fatherly and
almost human is the aspect of those grey flint
walls of which the church is composed! How
strong the low square tower, familiar with winds
from sea and land for centuries, yet still unshaken
by the storms! How soothing the grass on
the unrecorded graves— graves that look like
veritable beds for the long rest! And round this
railed-in tomb, how bright the geraniums and
other autumnal flowers, glowing with that deep
intensity of colour which comes upon them with
the fading light! Here, if anywhere, you may be
lulled in the lap of a placid antiquity. The church
has, indeed, been repaired of late years in one or
two places; but it evidently belongs in the main
to the early Norman times, and the restorations
have been made in a judicious spirit. The Grange,
also, has been apparently modernised, yet retains
the look of an old country mansion; and in
connexion with the parsonage are some fragments
of ancient walls belonging to an earlier building,
now removed.

The sea-side Downs have their romantic
associations for those who will seek them out. Here,
more than two hundred years ago, came Charles
Stuart, after the disastrous battle of Worcester;
and at the George Inn, in the then little fishing
village of Brightelmstone, he supped, the night
before he took ship for France, at Shoreham,
some six miles to the west. The prince had
originally designed to embark at Southampton; but
this was considered imprudent, owing to the
number of castles on the coast which the vessel
would have to pass, and at which it would most
probably have been examined for suspected
passengers. After much trouble, therefore, one
Colonel Gunter, assisted by Mr. Francis Mansel, a
merchant of Chichester, and Mr. Thomas Gunter,
a kinsman of the colonel, obtained a boat at
what we now call Brighton; and the prince, who