Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
The country that I have come over to-day is a very pretty one. The soil
is a pale yellow loam, looking like brick earth, but rather sandy; but
the bottom is a softish stone. Now-and-then, where you go through hollow
ways (as at East Grinstead) the sides are solid rock. And, indeed, the
rocks sometimes (on the sides of hills) show themselves above ground,
and, mixed amongst the woods, make very interesting objects. On the road
from the Wen to Brighton, through Godstone and over Turner's Hill, and
which road I crossed this morning in coming from Worth to East
Grinstead; on that road, which goes through Lindfield, and which is by
far the pleasantest coach-road from the Wen to Brighton; on the side of
this road, on which coaches now go from the Wen to Brighton, there is a
long chain of rocks, or, rather, rocky hills, with trees growing
amongst the rocks, or apparently out of them, as they do in the woods
near Ross in Herefordshire, and as they do in the Blue Mountains in
America, where you can see no earth at all; where all seems rock, and
yet where the trees grow most beautifully. At the place of which I am
now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant road to
Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a rock,
which they call "_Big-upon-Little_;" that is to say, a rock upon
another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer
and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no
trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How,
then, _came_ this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances
itself naturally enough; but what tossed it up? I do not like to _pay_ a
parson for teaching me, while I have "_God's own word_" to teach me;
but, if any parson will tell me _how_ big _came_ upon little, I do not
know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this: if
he say, All that we have to do is to _admire_ and _adore_; then I tell
him that I can admire and adore without his _aid_, and that I will keep
my money in my pocket.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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