er, afterwards
Mrs. Dorset, was the author of _The Peacock at Home_, a very popular
book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by
Roscoe's _Butterfly's Ball_. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of
the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to
an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig--for
the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story
of advice to a flock: "Do as I say, not as I do," is told also of him.

[Sidenote: VILLAGE HUMILITY]

The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is associated in my
mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had
given me a glass of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her
garden wall to consult while I drank. "Why," she said, "you don't mean
to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map." This is the
very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the
world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump. But pride
of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic.

Bury, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket
traditions. In June, 1796, the married women of Bury beat the single
women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of
women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury shine at cricket,
but in a Sussex paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Bury's
daughters assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza and engaging in a
hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering. Big Ben won.

[Illustration: _The Causeway, Horsham._]

CHAPTER XII

HORSHAM

Horsham stone--Horsham and history--Pressing to death--Juvenile
hostility to statues--Horsham's love of pleasure--Percy Bysshe
Shelley's boyhood--a letter of invitation--Sedition in Sussex--a
Slinfold epitaph--Rudgwick's cricket poet--Warnham pond--Stane
Street--Cobbett at Billingshurst--The new Christ's Hospital.

Horsham is the capital of West Sussex: a busy agricultural town with
horse dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that
are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of
venerable homes than the Causeway, joining Carfax and the church, with
its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its
graceful gables, jutting eaves, and glimpses of green gardens through
the doors and windows. The sweetest part of H