The East of Sussex, it seems fair to conjecture, has always been influenced by the presence of iron. The iron is no longer worked, but anywhere in the higher parts of the Eastern Weald one finds one’s self treading upon ironstone, and one sees the streams running red with the ore, and until so late as the Napoleonic Wars the exploitation of Sussex iron was continued. It is perhaps on account of this tradition and its effect upon the inhabitants that East Sussex has, as contrasted with West, a livelier, and (in the impression of the West) a less pleasing manner. Though it is farther from London in actual distance, it is nearer London in feeling. The proximity of Kent, with its great international highroad running through the heart of it, may have something to do with this. So also has the early clearing of the forest, and therefore the early establishment of free communication with the Thames valley. This feature we have already touched on in the development of Pevensey and Hastings Rapes. But whatever be the cause, the effect is apparent to those who know the county. One very curious result of it to-day is the difference in the modern settlement of East Sussex and of West. The new-comers with their villas and their great search for something old, that they may destroy it by their admiration, have different chances in the two parts of the county. In the West they can form, as it were, islands which stand alone in the midst of a highly resisting environment. They will build you a Haywards Heath which is like a London suburb, or a Ditchling or a Burgess Hill which is another such line of new houses, or those towns on the sea coast of which we have spoken, or the little group of red brick which defaces the landscape of West Horsham, or the lump which is beginning to destroy Barnham. But these encampments are tied close to the railway; they do not seem to spread their influence over the landscape or to change the character of the people in any way. In East Sussex you get, on the contrary, whole belts of country into which the spirit of the great towns has penetrated, perhaps for ever. Thus there is such a belt in the line of Rotherfield, Mayfield, and Heathfield. There is another stretch east and west from the height of Heathfield to the valley of the Rother, and notably in a village which we have already mentioned for its bad eminence in this respect--Burwash--which is just such a place as the Londoner or the Colonial calls “old world.” It is a village now only too conscious [Illustration: COTTAGES AT MAYFIELD] [Sidenote: THE SUSSEX PEASANT] of such a character and ready to exploit it for all it is worth. You have another example of this blight upon the top of Crowborough, which might as well be Hazlemere or Hindhead for all the South country feeling that is left to it.