Poor Miss Finch

ungo makes a

ough brown pony - these objects confronted me at the Lewes Station. I said to

cept an empty town-hall, with a sad policeman meditating on its spruce white steps. No customers in the shops, and nobody to serve them behind the counter, even if they had turned up. Here and there on the pavements, an inhabitant with a capacity

stic tombs, we got on a fine high road - still ascendi

I find myself in contact with them in strange places. Having nothing else to do, I searched Finch's boy. His political programme, I found to be:- As much meat and beer as I can contain; and as

enemy of mankind caroused and fattened, standing in the midst. On our left hand, spread the open country - a magnificent prospect of grand grassy hills, rolling away to the horizon; bounded only by the sky. To my surprise, Finch's boy descended; took the pony by the head; and deliberately led him of

there of th

n't," answere

tting out. We tied my luggage fast with a rope; and then we wen

g was to be seen but the majestic solitude of the hills. No living creatures appeared but the white dots of sheep scattered over the soft green distance, and the skylark singing his hymn of happiness, a speck above my head. Truly a wonderful place! Distant not more than a morning's drive from noisy and populous Brighton - a stranger to this neighborhood could only have found his way by the compass, exactly as if he had been sailing on the sea! The farther we penetrated on our land-voyage, the more wild and the more beautiful the solitary landscape grew. The boy picked his way as he chose - there were no barriers here. Plodding behind, I saw nothing, at one time, but the back of the chaise, tilte

me) our fiftieth grassy summit, I began

soft white line of the sea. Beneath me, at my feet, opened the deepest valley I had noticed yet - with one first sign of the presence of Man scored hideously on the face of Nature,

sources of his vocabulary remained invariably the same. Still t

d into th

hort cut, known only to themselves. We turned again, round another winding of the valley, and crossed a brook. I considered it my duty to make myself acquainted with the local names. What was the brook called? It was called "The Cockshoot"! And the great hill, here, on my right? It was called "The Overblow"! Five minutes more, and we saw our first house - lonely and little - b

e we

ground; also an inn named "The Cross–Hands," and a bit more of open ground; also a tiny, tiny butcher's shop, with sanguinary insides of sheep on one blue pie-dish in the window, and no other meat than that, and nothing to see beyond, but again the open ground, and again the hills; indicating the end of the village this side. On the other side there appears, for some distance, nothing but a long flint wall guarding the outhouses of a farm. Beyond this, comes another little group of cottages, with the seal

what am I to say? I suppo

lack face which he poked companionably into my hand. "Welcome, Madame Pratolungo, to Dimchurch; and excuse these male and female laborers who stand and stare at you. The good God who makes us all has made them too, bu

in. So my Land–Voyage over the South Down Hill