st go to the wall; I will help him; &c., &c.'" Blake
electrified the court by calling out "False!" in the midst of the
military evidence, the invented character of which was, however, so
obvious that an acquittal resulted. "In defiance of all decency," the
spectators cheered, and Hayley carried off the sturdy Republican (as he
was at heart) to Mid Lavant, to sup at Mrs. Poole's.

[Sidenote: BLAKE'S FLASHING EYE]

Mr. Gilchrist found an old fellow who had been present at the trial,
drawn thither by the promise of seeing the great man of the
neighbourhood, Mr. Hayley. All that he could remember was Blake's
flashing eye.

The Fox Inn, by the way, is still as it was, but the custom, I fancy,
goes more to the Thatched House, which adds to the charms of refreshment
a museum containing such treasures as a petrified cocoanut, the skeleton
of a lobster twenty-eight years old, and a representation of Moses in
the bulrushes.

A third and fourth great man, of a different type both from Hayley and
Blake, met at Felpham in 1819. One was Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ
Church, who, lying on his death-bed in the Manor House, was visited by
the other--his old pupil, the First Gentleman in Europe.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The Sussex provincial name for the whimbrel.

[Illustration: _Arundel._]

CHAPTER VII

ARUNDEL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD

A feudal town--Castles ruined and habitable--The old religion and
the new--Bevis of Southampton--Lord Thurlow lays an egg--A noble
park--A song in praise of Sussex--The father of cricket.

Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is
the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old,
or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even
Lewes among her Downs.

Arundel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Arun. Castle,
cathedral, church--these are Arundel; the town itself is secondary,
subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be--a mass
of battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet
more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in
their ancestral halls; and what might be a home, carrying on the
tradition of ages, is so often only a mere show, that to find an
historic castle like Arundel still lived in is very gratifying. In
Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses that the builders could
quickly make habitable once more. Arundel Castle, in