me, or destroyed by the undiscerning inhabitants of the
place.

During the Saxon aera, this town was almost the centre of the kingdom of
the South Saxons; and consequently could not be the scene of much action.
It submitted to the various revolutions which prevailed at different times,
until the Norman conquest.

The conqueror landed at Hastings forty miles distant to the east of this
town; so that his troops never came near it. Yet, the fate of England
being decided by the bloody engagement at Battel, this town, with many
other large possessions in the county, was granted to William de Warren,
who married the Conqueror's daughter: and he soon made it part of the
endowment of that rich priory, which he founded at Lewes.

This resigning of the town into the hands of monks was a fatal stroke to
its ancient greatness. Too attentive to their own immediate interest, and
too regardless of that of their vassals, as soon as they were in
possession of it, they laboured, and with success, to obtain an exemption
for it from supplying the king with ships, or affording him such other
succour, as a large and powerful maritime town ought to have done, on the
pretence of its being part of a religious estate.

(_To be concluded in our next_.)

[1] It appears to have been called Brighton in a terrier of lands,
dated in 1660.

[2] In the years 1800 and 1801, when wheat was at an unprecedented
price, the occupiers of farms on the South Downs converted much
of their downland into tillage, from which they acquired abundant
crops of corn. The green sward when once ploughed, can never be
restored to its former verdure, and although grass seeds have
been yearly sown in succession for more than 80 years upon down
formerly broken up and converted into arable land, the
distinctions between these parts and the original down is still
clearly perceptible.

[3] See the remains of a Druidical altar at Goldstone (Gor or Thor
stone) bottom, about a mile to the north-west of the town.

[4] A Mosaic pavement has been discovered at Lancing, within nine
miles west of the town.

* * * * *

FINE ARTS

* * * * *

LARGE PAINTED WINDOW OF THE CRUCIFIXION.

Mr. Wilmshurst has nearly completed a fine copy, on glass, of Mr. Hilton's
celebrated picture of the Crucifixion. It c