wetted before being laid upon the mortar. Obviously no wetting can be of the least use where one is dealing with flint. Nevertheless, the old work of the country is singularly enduring. Of this a first-rate example is afforded to the traveller by the one great slab of wall which is all that remains of Bramber Castle. Here is a piece of masonry standing perpendicularly for perhaps fifty feet in height, not particularly thick, made entirely of flint, and yet standing upright in spite of sieges and artillery fire, the destruction of all its supports, and the passage of at least six hundred years. It would be for an expert to discuss what were the causes of this superior excellence in the older work; but it may be suggested by one who has looked closely into several specimens of mediæval flint-building, that two rules were almost invariably observed by our ancestors before the Reformation. The first was to preserve as carefully as possible the natural casing or “skin” of hardened chalk which surrounds every large flint, and to have none of the smooth stone surface showing except on the outside of the wall. The second was to use nothing but the fine sand which the county affords so plentifully in the mixing of the mortar. It may be, of course, that here, as in so many other cases, the argument applies that we merely imagine the older work to be better because the best of it alone survives, but it is at least remarkable that hardly any flint work of the last three hundred years has come down without some distortion from the perpendicular. A very marked way of handling this stone is the cutting of the outer surface. This treatment is not peculiar to Sussex; it is to be found in East Anglia and in other parts of England where flints are common, but it is perhaps more general in Sussex than elsewhere, and may have originated in this county. The separate dressing of so many small stones is an expensive matter, and it is probably the very expense which is so incurred, or rather the great expenditure of energy connoted by the appearance of such work, which impresses and is designed to impress the spectator of it. Perhaps the most perfect specimen of a modern sort is the great house at West Deane; but all those who love their county are pleased to remark that in the new work at Arundel Castle this true Sussex style has been observed. There is but one further point to be remarked with regard to the Downs country, and that is the nature of the communication across the hills. [Illustration: BRAMBER CASTLE] [Sidenote: THE PASSES]