refully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald,
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men who were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

[Sidenote: NEWLAND, NYREN, AND SILVER BILLY]

Richard Newland, the father of serious cricket, came from this parish.
He was born in 1718, or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made 88 for England
against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those
days. He taught Richard Nyren, of Hambledon, all the skill and judgment
that that noble general possessed; Nyren communicated his knowledge to
the Hambledon eleven, and the game was made. An interest in historical
veracity compels me to add that William Beldham--Silver Billy--talking
to Mr. Pycroft, discounted some of Nyren's praise. "Cricket," he said,
"was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least [he was born in
1766]; but that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard
Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard
Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now a
second-rate man of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what
the rest of Sussex then were." But this is disregarding the
characteristic uncertainty of the game.

If one would spend a day far from mankind, on high ground, there is no
better way than to walk from Arundel through Houghton Forest (where, as
we have seen, Charles II. avoided the Governor) to Cocking.

CHAPTER VIII

LITTLEHAMPTON

A children's paradise--Wind-swept villages--Cary and
Coleridge--Sussex folklore--Climping--Richard Jefferies and
Sussex--John Taylor the Water Poet--Highdown Hill--A miller in love
with death--A digression on mills and millers--Treason at
Patching--A wife in a thousand--A Sussex truffler--The Palmer
triplets.

Littlehampton is favoured in having both sea and river. It also has
lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe, and is as nearly a
children's paradise as exists