vince.

The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications
of the splendour and extent of the building, which must have covered
some acres--a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by
Stane Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark
weald. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the
figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments; and here the
hot-air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the
floor has given way. A head of Winter in another of the sheds is very
fine; but it is rather for what these relics stand for, than any
intrinsic beauty, that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of
a power that has passed away. Nothing else so brings back the Roman
occupation of Sussex, when on still nights the clanking of armour in the
camp on the hill-top could be heard by the trembling Briton in the Weald
beneath; or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his
ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of
warriors descending the slope. I never see a Sussex hill crowned by a
camp, as at Wolstonbury, without seeing also in imagination a flash of
steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must
have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant--a terror which utterly
changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory
advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their grassy
contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and
trepidation--one never so realises this terror as when one descends
Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a
string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. That
semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most
vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses.

[Sidenote: PARSON DORSET]

Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of
Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest
house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life
very true to Sussex both in her work and in her homes--she was at school
at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton--was born in 1749. A
century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later.
To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will
they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turn