the configuration of the shore to have altered in an hour's space instead of in the course of many centuries, that, as one looks forth from the natural bulwark that encloses Shoreham harbour upon the expanse of the ocean, this would be the fourth point from which a traveller would agree with himself that his land journey was at an end and his sea voyage about to begin. Farther along the coast, there is at Worthing and Broadwater the same double disposition to which we have drawn attention. Broadwater, as the name implies, once stood on a wide backwater from the sea, traces of which may be discerned in a salt marsh which has an emissary beneath the road between Worthing and Lancing. Something of the same arrangement may be seen immediately to the west of Worthing. There the townnow sunk into a mere village-of West Tarring has a species of seaport in the village of Heene, now in course of rapid absorption by Worthing. The ruined chapel of St. Botolph at Heene was dependent on the mother church of West Tarring, a noble Edwardian edifice rising above choice specimens of fifteenthcentury Domestic Architecture, amid which flourish ancient figtrees, which, or their precursors, are traditionally asserted to have been planted by St. Thomas of Canterbury. There is no reason, however, to believe that West Tarring ever had any immediate access to the sea. It was an ancient market-town. It has decayed, not only relatively, as is the case with most towns in the south of England, which have paled before their northern rivals, but absolutely, and is now in truth, as we have stated, a mere hamlet. In old days, Arundel was a harbour, and as a seaport town had, like Dover, its Domus Dei. At the present time, although vessels of small tonnage can ascend the Arun to Arundel, the port of Arundel is Littlehampton, which, like Emsworth with relation to Chichester and Bosham, has absorbed the trade of the older seaport.

But in a physical survey of Western Sussex the interest centres in the Weald (or Wald), the woodland district which anciently occupied the whole of the interior. As much of the Wealden timber has been cut down, and portions of the Downs -as within the demesnes of Arundel and Goodwood—planted, the distinction between the sea-board and inland scenery is somewhat less marked than formerly.

The finest portion of the remaining timber of the Wealdnamely, St. Leonard's Forest-lies in the "Rape of Bramber," one of the two "Rapes," or divisions of the county, as has been stated, to which we are confined in viewing the borders of the Arun and the Adur. The Arun has its source in St. Leonard's Forest. In the upper portion of its course it passes the ancient and now rapidly developing border borough

of Horsham. It then runs some miles westward. At Pulborough, a town remarkable for a fine Third Pointed church and two medieval bridges, it is joined by the Rother, or Western Arun, the "wild Arun" of Collins and of Charlotte Smith's sonnet. Thence it turns south, by the castle-crowned heights of Amberley and Arundel, to its embouchure at Littlehampton. This course lays open much beautiful forest scenery, and also many interesting views in the open part of the valley. In the lower part of this course there is some deduction to be made from the beauty of the river, on account of the general flatness of its immediate margin, the stream lying only a few feet beneath it. Viewed from the river itself, the defect is somewhat less observable, and the finer features of the landscape tell. We remember being particularly struck with admiration of the beauty of the lower Arun when crossing the ferry immediately below the Church and picturesque manor-house at Bury. The Arun has long been celebrated for mullets, trout, and eels. The first of these proceed in summer as far upwards as Arundel, in quest, it is said, of a weed to which the excellence of their flavour is due.

The Adur-sometimes called the Beeding-rises, like the Arun, in St. Leonard's Forest. There is a difficulty in saying which of several converging rivulets is actually the source of the river. Some of these are external to the Forest. One rises about two miles from Slinfold, another about the same distance from Nuthurst; these, uniting near West Grinstead, are swollen by a brook that has its rise in the neighbourhood of West Chiltington. But the Adur may be said, with sufficient safety, to have its source near Slaugham, a place, in former days, of more reputation than at present, but now, as ever, one of the most picturesque of the Forest localities. At Slaugham, the Adur forms the extensive mill-pond. Thence it flows by Bolney, Twineham, and Shermanbury to its confluence with the stream that flows past West Grinstead, after which the united streams pursue their way by the ancient market town of Steyning and the hill-fort of Bramber, as we have seen, the Portus Adurni of the Romans, to Shoreham, where is the elevated barrier already described, that impedes, for a time, their discharge into the sea.

The chief feature of the Weald is, as the name announces, its timber. This is principally oak, with which the soil literally teems. But geology teaches us that this district must have once had another, and a much richer, vegetation. Then the temperature supported in their growth plants that we must now go as far as New Zealand to seek. Through the then tropical forest flowed a great river that, as its banks gradually sank, expanded into a lake well nigh commensurate with all Kent and

Sussex. But through these extended waters the current of the river still pursued its course, and deposited vast beds of sand and slime, that at length made their appearance as islands over the surface of the water, and were crowned by leafy trees on their higher portions, whilst the lower were marshes clothed with sedge and reeds. Over the islands roamed the huge iguanodon. On the lower levels, instead of the heron, the pterodactyle had its habitat, and, like a gigantic bat, winged its way over the waters of the marsh. But, although this is the picture of a time so far distant that it is hard to place it before ourselves, there is most distinct evidence of its truth.

We have, however, to trace this history farther. Everything suffered a sea change. The waters of the river-estuary we have been portraying were, by the subsidence of its bed, fairly merged in the ocean. At this date, the tide that beat in surf over the islands engulfed in the flood, invested their surfaces with a coating of sandy mud, and over that of calcareous ooze, forming, upon the Wealden beds of the river formation, the greensand and the chalk of the sea-shore. In confirmation of

the view that the Weald was once the bed of a river, the following remarkable fact may be adduced. If the transverse fissures in the North and South Downs by which the drainage of the district is effected could be closed up, all the rivers, as has been remarked by Mr. Conybeare, would be compelled even now to take an easterly course, and to discharge their waters into the sea by Romney Marsh and by Pevensey Levels. These fissures appear to be due to a convulsion of Nature, by which both chains of hills were simultaneously affected. The breaks by which these streams emerge to the basin of the Thames and those to the English Channel are exactly opposite each other. The Wey penetrates the North Downs, exactly in a line with the spot where the Dale of the Arun severs the southern chain. The defile of the Darenth corresponds with that of the Ouse. That of the Medway corresponds with that of the Cuckmere. The earthquake that raised the woodland valley above the sea level would raise the bases of the mountains, so that, to employ a loosely fitting comparison, instead of the level impost of Greek architecture, there would be an arch formed by rude mountain blocks, which would not, however, be wedge-shaped, but seamed by wide triangular fissures that have become the channels by which the rivers of the Weald communicate mediately or immediately with the sea. A section of the Wealden beds shows that they have the form of a dome thrust up from beneath and protruded through the crust of chalk. In all probability they rest upon coal.

St. Leonard's Forest has attained distinction, or at least

notoriety, by the singular narrative of a dragon that haunted it in the beginning of the seventeenth century. This portent "listened and looked about with great arrogance." It was seen -always at a safe distance-by various persons. Amongst these was the Horsham carrier, who, it is said, in the authenticated report of the dragon's proceedings, not without unintentional point," lieth at the White Horse, in Southwark." It has been remarked by Mr. G. B. Holmes, a local geologist, that the wonder-stricken beholders of the dragon "seem to have had a glimpse of the olden world, and to have stolen a march on the palæontologists, so accurately have they forestalled them in describing some of the distinctive characteristics of the Plesiosaurus." In the contributions of his sister Helen to the early history of the poet Shelley, we seem to hear the echo of the exploits of the quondam "Dragon of Faygate." The boy Shelley entertained his sisters with the account of the “Great Tortoise" that lived in Warnham Pond, and any unwonted noise that disturbed the quiet household was attributed to the presence amid the youthful company of this strange visitor. The tortoise appears to have been other things besides a tortoise, and, indeed, anything great and terrible in the incipient stage. But there was, in reality, an "old snake" that frequented the gardens of Field Place for several generations, until, in an unhappy hour, it fell a victim to the gardener's scythe. It is a peculiar circumstance that Shelley had in after years a great regard for these reptiles, and was himself called "Snake" by his intimates, perchance from this circumstance. He may, however, have been so styled from his habit of silently entering and leaving an apartment, his intermediate presence being evident to the company by the shining of his bright eyes upon them, and not by any salutation of his.

Another link may be supplied in the ophidian chain of forest legends. Besides the Chapel in St. Leonard's Forest, dependent on the Church of St. John the Baptist at Crawley, and which had its due place in the ecclesiastical system, there was the Chapel proper of St. Leonard, the hermit-saint from whom it appears that the forest itself is named. The legend is to the effect that this local saint fought with a serpent, or worm" (a locution to be found in "Antony and Cleopatra," act v. scene 2). The combat lasting a long while, and the combatants passing hither and thither in the forest glades, wherever the Saint's blood descended to the ground, sweet-scented lilies of the valley sprouted forth. Such is the traditional origin of these choice adornments of the forest. A similar productiveness is assigned by the poets to the footsteps of beauty. Thus, Eglamour, in Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd," traces the steps of his lost Earine :

Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the spring by following her;
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.

Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west wind she shot along,

And where she went, the flowers took thickest root,
As she had sowed them with her odorous foot.

(To be continued.)

ART. IV.-SPENSER AS A TEXTBOOK.

Spenser's Faery Queene. Books I. and II. Designed chiefly for the use of Schools. By G. W. KITCHIN, M.A., formerly Censor of Christ Church.

THER

HE selection of new textbooks in the "humanities" for the rising generation is a subject which deserves, perhaps, more attention than it has received. The contest around the bodies of Virgil, Horace, Homer, and Sophocles has raged for many generations, and their high value in education may be said. to be now established beyond dispute. Very recently, in the pages of the Nineteenth Century, an eloquent plea on behalf of classical studies, as refining and steadying the mind of youth, appeared from the pen of Professor Bonamy Price. As a fact, the classical writers are taught in all our superior schools, and will continue to be taught. The sorrows of Dido are in no danger of being forgotten, and the heroism of Antigone will stir the pulses of our grandchildren as it has stirred our own.

Nevertheless, though the firmness of the hold which the great classical writers have obtained on the educational répertoire of the country be admitted to the fullest extent, still new problems are ever emerging with the gradually altering conditions of English life. In the finely graduated chromatic scale of English society there are grades and half-grades, now very numerously represented, between the class that fills the superior and that which fills the primary schools-which, from the limitations in respect of time and money imposed by the circumstances of parents and the conditions of the callings awaiting them, cannot afford the time which the study of Greek and Latin, if it is to be fruitful in moulding character, requires. The boys and girls who belong to these grades and half-grades, if they learn Latin at all (Greek may be put out of question at once), have only time to obtain a smattering of it, and when this is the case it is