ath
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.

It has been thought that the Romans may have used Chanctonbury, but if
so they have left but little mark of their occupation, and indeed,
though the Downs as a whole far off are stamped with so Roman a
character, there is but one spot in their whole length where we may
say; here certainly the Legions have been. That spot lies upon the
last division of the Downs towards the west, the line of hills which
stands between Chichester and the Weald.

It is certain that the Romans were, in Sussex, most at home on that
great sea plain towards which the Downs slope so gradually southward.
Here indeed they built their town of Regnum, and perhaps towards the
end of their occupation of Britain they laid out the only purely military
highway which they built here from Regnum to London Bridge. This great
Roman road, known as the Stane Street, coming out of the eastern gate
of Chichester, takes the Downs as an arrow flies, crossing them
between Boxgrove and Bignor, nor is the work of Rome even to-day
wholly destroyed, for there under Bignor Hill we may still see the
pavement of their Way, while at Bignor itself we have perhaps the
best remains of a Roman villa left to us in Sussex.

[Illustration: THE DOWNS]

But though all these marks and signs, the memory and the ruins not
only of our forefathers, but of those our saviours who drew us within
the government of the Empire so that we are to-day what we are and not
as they who knew not the Romans, make the Downs sacred to us, it is
not only or chiefly for this that we love them or that in any thought
of Southern England, when far away, it is these great hills which
first come back into the mind and bring the tears to our eyes. We love
them for themselves, for their beauty and their persistence
certainly, but really because we have always known them and they more
than any other thing here in the south remind us and are a symbol of
our home. A man of South England must always have them in his heart

for every day of his childhood they have filled his eyes. And to-day
more especially they stand as a sign and a symbol. For not only are
they the first great hills which the Londoner sees, but they offer the
nearest relief and repose from the modern torture and noise of that
enormous place which has ceased to be a cit