From Felpham we drove along narrow roads to Littlehampton. I am not sure that we went the nearest or best way, indeed I feel almost sure we did not; even on the map it is not simple to follow. I know we wound about a good deal, first in one direction, then in another, but it was very pleasant wandering, and we passed by many delightful old homes and pretty cottages. It was a land of pleasant homes and quiet abiding. Now and then we caught a peep of the sea on one hand, and of the fine rolling "hills of the South Country" on the other, and on the level land between our road took its devious way as though of uncertain mind whether to make for the sea or the hills, then finally making for the sea at Littlehampton. Now and then we heard the fussy rattle of a mowing machine busy at work in a field. Not only country sights but country sounds have changed greatly during the past century. Scarcely ever now one hears the once familiar whetting of the scythe, or the soothing swish of it in the long grass. Sings Tennyson: O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew. That is the value of pleasant sounds. It is long since I have heard the beat of the flail threshing out the grain on the barn floor; to-day in its place we have the steam threshing-machine, and that is the only mechanical sound that pleases my ear, the dreamy hum of it when mellowed by distance. Doubtless associations have much to do with the pleasure sounds afford. Who loves not the "caw, caw, caw" of the rook? Yet in reality it is a sound harsh and grating, but then one always so intimately connects it with the country, big trees, ancestral homes and rural delights, that, though truly discordant, the notes even gratify the ear. So we reached Littlehampton, half port half watering-place, of no great importance as either. From Littlehampton our road kept up much the same pleasantly rural and uneventful character, with hills to the north and the sea to the south, and the same sort of level and, in parts, well-wooded land between. "Hills," it has been said, "give hope, wood a kind of mysterious friendliness with the earth, but the sea reminds us that we are helpless." We had all three, but the sea that day, gleaming and bright in the glance of the sun, looked more like a friend than a foe; it did not suggest the helplessness of man but rather his convenient highway over the world to distant lands of old romance--if any be left. There is an infinite pleasure to the quiet-loving pilgrim in driving through a lulling land like this where all is restful to the eye and hurry a thing unknown, a land through which you drive on in a sort of day-dream and for a time desire nothing better, a land Where the wind with the scent of the sea is fed, And the sun seems glad to shine. In truth there was a touch of sunny Southernness about it, a warmth and brightness suggestive of Italy, though the scenery was essentially English.