Highways and Byways in SussexLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
Highways and Byways in Sussex
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Sussex (England) -- Description and travel
"When I look at this little chap--at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes,
and his clean, plain, coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I
wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base,
corrupt, perjured Republican Judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little
lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of
villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange
circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant
tyrant like M'keen, the Chief Justice, and afterwards Governor, of
Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals,
called a 'Senate and a House of Representatives,' at Harrisburgh, in
that state!"
[Sidenote: A VILLAGE DISPUTE]
Billingshurst church has an interesting ceiling, an early brass (to
Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlet), and the record of one of those disputes
over pews which add salt to village life and now and then, as we saw at
Littlehampton, lead to real trouble. The verger (if he be the same) will
tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held
every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical
"packing" of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past
a noble carved chair used to be placed in one of the galleries for the
schoolmaster, and there would he sit during service surrounded by his
boys.
One returns to Horsham from Billingshurst through Itchingfield, where
the new Christ's Hospital has been built in the midst of green fields: a
glaring red-brick settlement which the fastidiously urban ghost of
Charles Lamb can now surely never visit. "Lamb's House," however, is the
name of one of the buildings; and Time the Healer, who can do all
things, may mellow the new school into Elian congeniality.
CHAPTER XIII
ST. LEONARD'S FOREST
Recollections of the Forest--Leonardslee--Michael Drayton and the
iron country--Thomas Fuller on great guns--The serpent of St.
Leonard's Forest--The Headless Horseman--Sussex and nightingales.
To the east of Horsham spreads St. Leonard's Forest, that vast tract of
moor and preserve which, merging into Tilgate Forest, Balcombe Forest,
and Worth Forest, extends a large part of the way to East Grinstead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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