So it is: and yet with even those who think no more of it, the place, if not the scenery, has its aftermath of influence. In later times, when sickness, absence, or the loss of sight debars them, men will feel a deep impression of a thing to long for. To be longed for with a yearning stronger than mere admiration, or the painter’s taste can form. For he, whatever pleasure rises at the beauty of the scene, loses it by thinking of it; even as the joy of all things dies in the enjoying. But to those who there were born (and never thought about it), in the days of age or ailment, or of better fortune even in a brighter climate, how at the sound of an ancient name, or glimpse of faint resemblance, or even on some turn of thought untraced and unaccountable--again the hills and valleys spread, to aged vision truer than they were to youthful eyesight; again the trees are rustling in the wind as they used to rustle; again the sheep climb up the brown turf in their snowy zigzag. A thousand winks of childhood widen into one clear dream of age. CHAPTER II. COOMBE LORRAINE. “How came that old house up there?” is generally the first question put by a Londoner to his Southdown friend leading him through the lowland path. “It must have a noble view; but what a position, and what an aspect!” “The house has been there long enough to get used to it,” is his host’s reply; “and it is not built, as they are where you live, of the substance of a hat.” That large old-fashioned house, which looks as if it had been much larger, stands just beneath the crest of a long-backed hill in a deep embrasure. Although it stands so high, and sees much less of the sun than the polestar, it is not quite so weather-beaten as a stranger would suppose. It has some little protection, and a definite outline for its grounds, because it was built on an old and extensive settlement of the chalk; a thing unheeded in early times, but now very popular and attractive, under the name of “landslip.” Of these there are a good many still to be traced on the sides of the Sussex hills, caused (as the learned say) by the shifting of the green-sand, or silt, which generally underlies the more stable chalk. Few, however, of them are so strongly marked and bold as this one, which is known as “Coombe Lorraine.” It is no mere depression or irregular subsidence, but a sheer vertical drop, which shows as if a broad slice had been cut out from the chine to the base of the highland. Here, in the time of William Rufus, Roland de Lorraine, having a grant from him, or from the Conqueror, and trusting the soil to slide no more, or ignorant that it had ever slidden, built himself a dwelling-place to keep a look-out on his property. This abode, no doubt, was fitted for warlike domesticity, being founded in the fine old times when every gentleman was bound to build himself a castle.