Between, like an uneven river bed with its drifts and islands of soil, running from west to east, lies the Weald, opening at last as it were into the broad estuary of Romney Marsh, half lost in the sea.

It commands the camps at Cissbury, the Devil's Dyke, High Down and White Hawk, the whole breadth of the Weald lay beneath it and a signal displayed upon Leith Hill upon the North Downs could easily be answered from this noble mountain; Mount Caburn itself was not more essentially important.

That spot lies upon the last division of the Downs towards the west, the line of hills which stands between Chichester and the Weald.

Now this road I followed passes westward out of Lewes and then turns swiftly north, climbing as it goes, under the Downs beyond Offham, turning west again under Mount Harry and so on past Courthouse Farm and Plumpton church, which stands lonely in a field to the north of the road, till suddenly by Westmaston church under Ditchling Beacon it turns north again towards the Weald and enters the very notable village of Ditchling.

All that way is worth a king's ransom, for it gives you all the steepness of the Downs upon their steepest side, their sudden north escarpment, towering up over the Weald some seven hundred feet or more.

Ditchling village is charming, with more than one old half-timber house, and the church of St Margaret's is not only interesting in itself, but, standing as it does upon rising ground and yet clear of the great hills, it offers you one of the finest views of the Downs anywhere to be had from the Weald.

The camp above the Devil's Dyke is of the usual design of a hill-top fortress, the defence following the natural line of the hill, the look-out having been apparently upon the north-west, whence a remarkably extensive view is to be had both over the Weald and the Downs.

In the morning I liked the place better still, and remembering the "tarmac" and the sophistication (alas!) of Steyning, I decided to stay where I was two or three days and to visit thence a place in the Weald it had long been my desire to see.

This country which we know as the Weald is obviously bounded north and south by the Downs which enclose it, as they do, too, upon the west, where between Winchester and Petersfield and Selborne the two ranges narrow and meet.

Thence, indeed, the Weald spreads eastward in an ever widening delta till it is lost in the marshes and the sea.

We hear of it first under a Saxon name, Andredeswald, whence we get our name of the Weald, and we find it always spoken of not only by the Saxons, but by the Romans before them as an obstacle, though not, it would seem, an insurmountable one.

Such an assertion is merely an attempt on the part of men, who do not know the Weald, to explain the facts of which I have spoken, namely, that the Weald appears as an obstacle in our early history, though not insurmountable, and that it continually offered a secure hiding-place and refuge to the fugitive.

Such an assertion is merely an attempt on the part of men, who do not know the Weald, to explain the facts of which I have spoken, namely, that the Weald appears as an obstacle in our early history, though not insurmountable, and that it continually offered a secure hiding-place and refuge to the fugitive.

The Weald as it appears to us first, is the secure home of those who first smelted the ironstone in which it abounds, and as such it remained during many ages.

The Weald lay between the Channel and its ports, that is to say, the entries into England from the continent, and the Thames valley; it was then an obstacle that had to be overcome.

But the Romans had more to face than an impenetrable woodland or the roughness of the country; they had to overcome the lack of water, and therefore in the Weald their day's march of some twelve miles was pressed to double its normal length.

We read in the rude chronicle of the Saxons of two men who sought refuge in the Weald, in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Such then was the nature of the Weald and such fundamentally it remains, a stubborn and really untameable country, even to-day not truly humanised, still largely empty of towns and villages but scattered with isolated farms and steadings.

And the essential inhumanity of the true heart of the Weald is borne out by the scarcity of religious houses there.

It is, in fact, only to-day that a great monastery stands in the heart of the Weald, and of all wonderful things that is a Carthusian House of the like of which Pre-reformation England boasted but twelve, and Sussex none at all.

It bears witness as nothing else could do to-day, perhaps, to the true character of the Weald.

Let others think as they will, for me the monastery of St Hugh in the Weald is holy ground.

That a Carthusian monastery should have been founded to-day in the midst of the Weald proves, if anything can, that it has not yet wholly lost its character.

[Illustration: SELBORNE FROM THE HANGER] Bishop Sutton was the last place I was to see upon the old road, for a mile beyond that village I left it where it turned northward, to go east into Ripley and so by the byways to climb into the hills, and crossing them to descend steeply at evening into the village of Selborne by the Oakhanger stream just before it enters that narrow brief pass into the Weald.

Dear, sweet Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful ... southern England, not the norththere is something Celtic in the north,southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces;a smock frock is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so absolutely English.