pot which gladsome thoughts may share.

The ordinary person, not a poet, would, I fear, prefer to think of
Kingly Bottom's Druidical past.

[Sidenote: THE MARDEN VIOLETS]

The last time I was in Kingly Bottom--it was in April--after leaving the
barrows on the summit of the Bow Hill, above the Vale, I walked by
devious ways to East Marden, between banks thick with the whitest and
sweetest of sweet white violets. East Marden, however, has no inn and is
therefore not the best friend of the traveller; but it has the most
modest and least ecclesiastical-looking church in the world, and by
seeking it out I learned two secrets: the finest place for white violets
and the finest place to keep a horse. There is no riding country to
excel this hill district between Singleton and the Hampshire border.

At the neighbouring village of Stoughton, whither I meant to walk (since
an inn is there) was born, in 1783, the terrible George Brown--Brown of
Brighton--the fast bowler, whose arm was as thick as an ordinary man's
thigh. He had two long stops, one of whom padded his chest with straw. A
long stop once held his coat before one of Brown's balls, but the ball
went through it and killed a dog on the other side. Brown could throw a
4-1/2 oz. ball 137 yards, and he was the father of seventeen children.
He died at Sompting in 1857.

[Sidenote: CHURCHYARD POETRY]

Of Racton, on the Hampshire border, and its association with Charles
II., I have already spoken. Below, it is Westbourne, a small border
village in whose churchyard are two pleasing epitaphs. Of Jane, wife of
Thomas Curtis, who died in 1719, it is written:--

She was like a lily fresh and green,
Soon cast down and no more seen.

and of John Cook:

Pope said an honest man
Is the noblest work of God.
If Pope's assertion be from error clear,
One of God's noblest works lies buried here.

[Illustration: _Bosham._]

CHAPTER VI

CHICHESTER AND THE PLAIN

Bosham and history--An expensive pun--The Bosham bells--Chidham
wheat--The Manhood peninsula--Selsey's adders--Selsey Bill--St.
Wilfrid and the Sussex heathen--Pagham Harbour in its palmy
days--Bognor--Felpham's great rider--Mr. Hayley and Mrs. Opie--An
epitaph and a poem--A fairy's funeral--William Blake in Sussex--The
trial of a traitor.

On leaving Chichester West Street becomes the Portsmouth Road and passes
through Fishbourne, a pleasan