Part 41

Farther down the coast is the ancient "limb" of Dover, which has grown into the rival port of Folkestone. This modern port, created to aid the necessities of travel across the Channel, stands at the north-eastern corner of the Romney Marsh, a district that has been raised out of the sea and is steadily increasing in front of the older coast-line, shown by a range of hills stretching westward from Folkestone. This marsh has made the sea retreat fully three miles from Hythe, whose name signifies "the harbor," though it is now an inland village, with a big church dedicated to St. Leonard, the deliverer of captives, who was always much reverenced in the Cinque Ports, their warlike sailors being frequently taken prisoner. In a crypt under its chancel is a large collection of skulls and bones, many of them bearing weapon scars and cuts, showing them to be relics of the wars. Beyond Hythe the Rother originally flowed into the Channel, but a great storm in the reign of Edward I. silted up its outlet, and the river changed its course over towards Rye, so as to avoid the Cinque port of Romney that was established on the western edge of the marshes to which it gave the name. Romney is now simply a village without any harbor, and of the five churches it formerly had, only the church of St. Nicholas remains as a landmark among the fens that have grown up around it, an almost treeless plain intersected by dykes and ditches.

RYE AND WINCHELSEA.

The unpicturesque coast is thrust out into the sea to the point at Dungeness where the lighthouse stands a beacon in a region full of peril to the navigator; and then the coast again recedes to the cove wherein is found the quaint old town of Rye, formerly an important "limb" of the Cinque port of Hastings. It has about the narrowest and crookedest streets in England, and the sea is two miles away from the line of steep and broken rock along which "Old Rye" stretches. The ancient houses, however, have a sort of harbor, formed by the junction of the three rivers, the Rother, Brede, and Tillingham, and thus Rye supports quite a fleet of fishing-craft. Thackeray has completely reproduced in _Denis Duval_ the ancient character of this place, with its smuggling atmosphere varied with French touches given by the neighborhood of the Continent. Rye stands on one side of a marshy lowland, and Winchelsea about three miles distant on the other side. The original Winchelsea, we are told, was on lower ground, and, after frequent floodings, was finally destroyed by an inundation in 1287. King Edward I. founded the new town upon the hill above. It enjoyed a lucrative trade until the fifteenth century, when, like most of the others, its prosperity was blighted by the sea's retiring. The harbor then became useless, the inhabitants left, the houses gradually disappeared, and, the historian says, the more massive buildings remaining "have a strangely spectral character, like owls seen by daylight." Three old gates remain, including the Strand Gate, where King Edward nearly lost his life soon after the town was built. It appears that the horse on which he was riding, frightened by a windmill, leaped over the town-wall, and all gave up the king for dead. Luckily, however, he kept his saddle, and the horse, after slipping some distance down the incline, was checked, and Edward rode safely back through the gate. There is a fine church in Winchelsea--St. Thomas of Canterbury--within which are the tombs of Gervase Alard and his grandson Stephen. They were the most noted sailors of their time, and Gervase in 1300 was admiral of the fleet of the Cinque Ports, his grandson Stephen appearing as admiral in 1324. These were the earliest admirals known in England, the title, derived from the Arabic _amir_, having been imported from Sicily. Gervase was paid two shillings a day. At the house in Winchelsea called the "Friars" lived the noted highwaymen George and Joseph Weston, who during the last century plundered in all directions, and then atoned for it by the exercise of extensive charity in that town: one of them actually became a churchwarden.

HASTINGS AND PEVENSEY.

The cliffs come out to the edge of the sea at Winchelsea, and it is a pleasant walk along them to Hastings, with its ruined castle, the last of the Cinque Ports. This was never as important a port as the others, but the neighboring Sussex forests made it a convenient place for shipbuilding. The castle ruins are the only antiques at Hastings, which has been gradually transformed into a modern watering-place in a pretty situation. Its eastern end, however, has undergone little transition, and is still filled with the old-fashioned black-timber houses of the fishermen. The battle of Hastings, whereby William the Conqueror planted his standard on English soil, was fought about seven miles inland. His ships debarked their troops all along this coast, while St. Valéry harbor in France, from which he sailed, is visible in clear weather across the Channel. William himself landed at Pevensey, farther westward, where there is an old fortress of Roman origin located in the walls of the ancient British-Roman town that the heathen Saxons had long before attacked, massacring the entire population. Pevensey still presents within these walls the Norman castle of the Eagle Honour, named from the powerful house of Aquila once possessing it. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the landing of William at Pevensey, which was a "limb" of Hastings. Its Roman name was Anderida, the walls enclosing an irregular oval, the castle within being a pentagon, with towers at the angles. Beyond it the Sussex coast juts out at the bold white chalk promontory of Beachy Head.

A short distance inland from Pevensey is the great Sussex cattle-market at Hailsham, where the old Michelham Priory is used as a farm-house and its crypt as a dairy. Not far away is Hurstmonceux Castle, a relic of the times of Henry VI., and built entirely of brick, being probably the largest English structure of that material constructed since the Roman epoch. Only the shell of the castle remains, an interesting and picturesque specimen of the half fortress, half mansion of the latter days of feudalism. The main gateway on the southern front has flanking towers over eighty feet high, surmounted by watch-turrets from which the sea is visible. The walls are magnificently overgrown with ivy, contrasting beautifully with the red brick. Great trunks of ivy grow up from the dining-room, and all the inner courts are carpeted with green turf, with hazel-bushes appearing here and there among the ruined walls. A fine row of old chestnuts stands beyond the moat, and from the towers are distant views of Beachy Head, its white chalk-cliffs making one of the most prominent landmarks of the southern coast.

BRIGHTON.

Westward of Beachy Head is the noted watering-place of this southern coast, Brighton, the favorite resort of the Londoners, it being but fifty-one miles south of the metropolis. This was scarcely known as a fashionable resort until about 1780, when George IV., then the Prince of Wales, became its patron. Taken altogether, its large size, fine buildings, excellent situation, and elaborate decorations make Brighton probably the greatest sea-coast watering-place in Europe. It stretches for over three miles along the Channel upon a rather low shore, though in some places the cliffs rise considerably above the beach. Almost the entire sea-front, especially to the eastward, is protected by a strong sea-wall of an average height of sixty feet and twenty-three feet thick at the base. This wall cost $500,000 to build, and it supports a succession of terraces available for promenade and roadway. In front the surf rolls in upon a rather steep pebbly beach, upon which are the bathing-machines and boats. Along the beach, and behind the sea-wall, Brighton has a grand drive, the Marine Parade, sixty feet wide, extending for three miles along the shore and in front of the buildings, with broad promenades on the sea-side ornamented with lawns and gardens, and on the other side a succession of houses of such grand construction as to resemble rows of palaces, built of the cream-colored Portland stone. The houses of the town extend far back on the hillsides and into the valleys, and the permanent population of 130,000 is largely augmented during the height of the season--October, November, and December. Enormous sums have been expended upon the decoration of this great resort, and its Marine Parade, when fashion goes there in the autumn, presents a grand scene. From this parade two great piers extend out into the water, and are used for promenades, being, like the entire city front, brilliantly illuminated at night. The eastern one is the Chain Pier, built in 1823 at a cost of $150,000, and extending eleven hundred and thirty-six feet into the sea. The West Pier, constructed about fifteen years ago, is somewhat broader, and stretches out eleven hundred and fifteen feet. Each of the piers expands into a wide platform at the outer end, that of the West Pier being one hundred and forty feet wide, and here bands play and there are brilliant illuminations. Both piers are of great strength, and only four cents admission is charged to them. Prince George built at Brighton a royal pavilion in imitation of the pagodas of the Indies, embosomed in trees and surrounded by gardens. This was originally the royal residence, but in 1850 the city bought it for $265,000 as a public assembly-room. The great attraction of Brighton, however, is the aquarium, the largest in the world, opened in 1872. It is constructed in front of the Parade, and, sunken below its level, stretches some fourteen hundred feet along the shore, and is one hundred feet wide, being surmounted by gardens and footwalks. It is set at this low level to facilitate the movement of the sea-water, and its design is to represent the fishes and marine animals as nearly as possible in their native haunts and habits, to do which, and not startle the fish, the visitors go through darkened passages, and are thus concealed from them, all the light coming in by refraction through the water. Their actions are thus natural, and they move about with perfect freedom, some of the tanks being of enormous size. Here swim schools of herring, mackerel, and porpoises as they do out at sea, the octopus gyrates his arms, and almost every fish that is known to the waters of that temperature is exhibited in thoroughly natural action. The tanks have been prepared most elaborately. The porpoises and larger fish have a range of at least one hundred feet, and rocks, savannahs, and everything else they are accustomed to are reproduced. The visitors walk through vaulted passages artistically decorated, and there is music to gladden the ear. This aquarium also shows the processes of fish-hatching, and has greatly increased the world's stock of knowledge as to fish-habits. The tanks hold five hundred thousand gallons of fresh and salt water.

Back of Brighton are the famous South Downs, the chalk-hills of Sussex, which stretch over fifty miles parallel to the coast, and have a breadth of four or five miles, while they rise to an average height of five hundred feet, their highest point being Ditchling Beacon, north of Brighton, rising eight hundred and fifty-eight feet. They disclose picturesque scenery, and the railways from London wind through their valleys and dart into the tunnels under their hills, whose tops disclose the gyrating sails of an army of windmills, while over their slopes roam the flocks of well-tended sheep that ultimately become the the much-prized South Down mutton. The chalk-cliffs bordering the Downs slope to the sea, and in front are numerous little towns, for the whole coast is dotted with watering-places. A few miles east of Brighton is the port of New Haven on a much-travelled route across the Channel to Dieppe.

WISTON PARK.

To the westward of Brighton and in the South Downs is the antique village of Steyning, near which is Rev. John Goring's home at Wiston Manor, an Elizabethan mansion of much historical interest and commanding views of extreme beauty. This is one of the most attractive places in the South Downs, a grand park with noble trees, herds of deer wandering over the grass, and the great ring of trees on top of Chanctonbury Hill, planted in 1760. Charles Goring, the father of the present owner, planted these trees in his early life, and sixty-eight years afterwards, in 1828, he then being eighty-five years old, addressed these lines to the hill:

"How oft around thy Ring, sweet Hill, a boy I used to play, And form my plans to plant thy top on some auspicious day! How oft among thy broken turf with what delight I trod! With what delight I placed those twigs beneath thy maiden sod! And then an almost hopeless wish would creep within my breast: 'Oh, could I live to see thy top in all its beauty dressed!' That time's arrived; I've had my wish, and lived to eighty-five; I'll thank my God, who gave such grace, as long as e'er I live; Still when the morning sun in spring, whilst I enjoy my sight, Shall gild thy new clothed Beech and sides, I'll view thee with delight."

The house originally belonged to Earl Godwine, and has had a strange history. One of its lords was starved to death at Windsor by King John; Llewellyn murdered another at a banquet; a third fell from his horse and was killed. Later, it belonged to the Shirleys, one of whom married a Persian princess; it has been held by the Gorings for a long period. This interesting old mansion has a venerable church adjoining it, surmounted by an ivy-clad tower. Chanctonbury Hill rises eight hundred and fourteen feet, and its ring of trees, which can be seen for many miles, is planted on a circular mound surrounded by a trench, an ancient fortification. From it there is a grand view over Surrey and Sussex and to the sea beyond--a view stretching from Windsor Castle to Portsmouth, a panorama of rural beauty that cannot be excelled.

ARUNDEL CASTLE.

The little river Arun flows from the South Downs into the sea, and standing upon its banks is Arundel Castle, which gives the title of earl to the unfortunate infant son and heir of the Duke of Norfolk, whose blindness shows that even the greatest wealth and highest rank do not command all things in this world. A village of two steep streets mounts up the hill from the river-bank to the castle, which has unusual interest from its striking position and the long line of its noble owners--the Fitzalans and Howards. The extensive ramparts surround a ponderous keep and there are fine views in all directions. This is a favorite home of the Duke of Norfolk, and is surrounded by an extensive park. The tombs of his ancestors are in the old parish church of St. Nicholas, built in the fourteenth century, alongside which the duke has recently constructed a magnificent Roman Catholic church in Decorated Gothic at a cost of $500,000. The architect of this church was Mr. Hansom, who invented for the benefit of London the Hansom cab. Westward of Arundel is Chichester, distinguished for its cathedral and cross, the ancient Regnum of the Romans. The cathedral, recently restored, is peculiar from having five aisles with a long and narrow choir. Here is buried Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel in the fourteenth century. This cathedral has a consistory court over the southern porch, reached by a spiral staircase, from which a sliding door opens into the Lollards' Dungeon. It has a detached campanile or bell-tower rising on the north-western side, the only example in England of such an attachment to a cathedral. The Chichester market-cross, standing at the intersection of four streets in the centre of the town, is four hundred years old. In front of Chichester, but nine miles away, the low peninsula of Selsey Bill projects into the sea and is the resort of innumerable wild-fowl. Three miles out of town is Goodwood, where the races are held. Goodwood is the seat of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who has a fine park, and a valuable picture-gallery particularly rich in historical portraits. At Bigner, twelve miles from Chichester over the chalk-downs, are the remains of an extensive Roman villa, the buildings and pavements having been exhumed for a space of six hundred by three hundred and fifty feet. The Rother, a tributary of the Arun, flows down from Midhurst, where are the ruins of Cowdray, an ancient Tudor stronghold that was burned in 1793, its walls being now finely overgrown with ivy. Dunford House, near Midhurst, was the estate presented to Richard Cobden by the "Anti-Corn Law League."

SELBORNE.

Crossing from Midhurst over the border into Hampshire, the village of Selborne is reached, one of the smallest but best known places in England from the care and minuteness with which Rev. Gilbert White has described it in his _Natural History of Selborne_. It is a short distance south-east of Alton and about fifty miles south-west of London, while beyond the village the chalk-hills rise to a height of three hundred feet, having a long hanging wood on the brow, known as the Hanger, made up mainly of beech trees. The village is a single straggling street three-quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered valley and running parallel with the Hanger. At each end of Selborne there rises a small rivulet, the one to the south becoming a branch of the Arun and flowing into the Channel, while the other is a branch of the Wey, which falls into the Thames. This is the pleasant little place, located in a broad parish, that Gilbert White has made famous, writing of everything concerning it, but more especially of its natural history and peculiarities of soil, its trees, fruits, and animal life. He was born at Selborne in 1720, and died there in 1793, in his seventy-third year. He was the father of English natural history, for much of what he wrote was equally applicable to other parts of the kingdom. His modest house, now overgrown with ivy, is one of the most interesting buildings in the village, and in it they still keep his study about as he left it, with the close-fronted bookcase protected by brass wire-netting, to which hangs his thermometer just where he originally placed it. The house has been little if any altered since he was carried to his last resting-place. He is described by those who knew him as "a little thin, prim, upright man," a quiet, unassuming, but very observing country parson, who occupied his time in watching and recording the habits of his parishioners, quadruped as well as feathered. At the end of the garden is still kept his sun-dial, the lawn around which is one of the softest and most perfect grass carpets in England.

The pleasant little church over which White presided is as modest and almost as attractive as his house. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and measures fifty-four by forty-seven feet, being almost as broad as it is long, consisting of three aisles, and making no pretensions, he says, to antiquity. It was built in Henry VII.'s reign, is perfectly plain and unadorned, and without painted glass, carved work, sculpture, or tracery. Within it, however, are low, squat, thick pillars supporting the roof, which he thinks are Saxon and upheld the roof of a former church, which, falling into decay, was rebuilt on these massive props because their strength had preserved them from the injuries of time. They support blunt Gothic arches. He writes that he remembers when the beams of the middle aisle were hung with garlands in honor of young women of the parish who died virgins. Within the chancel is his memorial on the wall, and he rests in an unassuming grave in the churchyard. The belfry is a square embattled tower forty-five feet high, built at the western end, and he tells pleasantly how the three old bells were cast into four in 1735, and a parishioner added a fifth one at his own expense, marking its arrival by a high festival in the village, "rendered more joyous by an order from the donor that the treble bell should be fixed bottom upward in the ground and filled with punch, of which all present were permitted to partake." The porch of the church to the southward is modern and shelters a fine Gothic doorway, whose folding doors are evidently of ancient construction. The vicarage stands alongside to the westward, an old Elizabethan house.

Among the singular things in Selborne to which White calls attention are two rocky hollow lanes, one of which leads to Alton. These roads have, by the traffic of ages and the running of water, been worn down through the first stratum of freestone and partly through the second, so that they look more like water-courses than roads. In many places they have thus been sunken as much as eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields alongside, so that torrents rush along them in rainy weather, with miniature cascades on either hand that are frozen into icicles in winter. These lanes, thus rugged and gloomy, affright the timid, but, gladly writes our author, they "delight the naturalist with their various botany." The old mill at Selborne, with its dilapidated windsails, presents a picturesque appearance, and up on the chalk-hills, where there is a far-away view over the pleasant vale beyond, is the Wishing Stone, erected on a little mound among the trees. All these things attracted our author's close attention, and as his parish was over thirty miles in circumference, as may be supposed his investigations covered a good deal of ground. His work is chiefly written in the form of a series of letters to friends, and he occasionally digresses over the border into the neighboring parishes to speak of their peculiarities or attractions. They all had in his day little churches, and the parish church of Greatham, not far from Selborne, is a specimen of the antique construction of the diminutive chapels that his ancestors handed down to their children for places of worship, each surrounded by its setting of ancient gravestones. The _History of Selborne_ shows how the country parson in the olden time, whose flock was small, parish isolated, and visitors few, amused himself; but he has left an enduring monument that grows the more valuable as the years advance. In fact, it is a text-book of natural history; and so complete have been his observations that he not only describes all the plants and animals, birds, rocks, soils, and buildings, but he also has space to devote to the cats of Selborne, and to tell how they prowl in the roadway and mount the tiled roofs to capture the chimney swallows. How he loved his home is shown in the poem with which his work begins. We quote the opening stanza, and also some other characteristic portions of this ode, which describes the attractions of Selborne in the last century: