SECTION I.-General description of Lewes, with an outline of the surrounding district.

THE Borough and Town of Lewes is delightfully situated on the Sussex coast1, about seven miles from the sea, fifty from London, and at nearly an equal distance of seven miles from Brighton, Rottingdean, Newhaven, Ditchling, and Uckfield. The town stands on the eastern declivity of one of those turf-covered eminences of the chalk formation, so well known and distinguished as the South Downs; and though its site is somewhat elevated, it is still surrounded on the south, east, and west by an amphitheatre of bolder and loftier hills.

At the base of the protruded Down on which the town is built, the river Ouse winds its way in a serpentine direction, forming a boundary line between the two. Rapes of Lewes and Pevensey. The river takes its rise from two springs, the highest of which is in Saint Leonard's forest, the lower at Selsfield, on the border of the forest of Worth. A confluence of the two currents takes place a few miles north of the village of Lindfield, near which the augmented river passes, and pursuing its tortuous course to the south-east, nearly half encircles Sheffield Park; proceeding more directly south the stream runs by Isfield, Barcombe, and Hamsey, and winding round the sloping head-land opposite Landport, enters the Lewes levels north of the town. After separating the Cliff from the town of Lewes, it proceeds in a meandering direction through the marshy levels, and having received in its progress several tributary streams, at length

Latitude 50' 52′ 22′′, Longitude 33" east of Greenwich.

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empties its waters into the British Channel at the harbour of Newhaven. The river is affected by the tide for a considerable distance above the town, and is navigable for barges of forty tons burthen as far as Hamsey without the aid of locks, and with them for many miles beyond. The value of the river, in a commercial point of view, cannot be justly estimated; but the pleasing diversity that its ebbing or flowing waters give to what would otherwise present rather an unanimated view, renders it an object of varied interest to the town. The singular appearance presented from different parts of the town and neighbourhood, by the vessels coming up or descending the river, when the water is not visible in the channel, is not inaptly described in the following lines from "The South Downs," a poem published in 1793.

The Ouse beneath old Andred's placid son,
In slow meanders rolls his waters on:
Averse he winds in briny waste to lose
Th' enchanting scenes on either bank he views,
As turns the ling'ring school-boy oft to greet
The lessening summit of his natal seat.
Unseen both hull and tide, the bellying sail
Majestic moves along the sedgy vale,

While at its progress on the wať'ry maze

Like magic movement, wond'ring strangers gaze.

The face of the country south of the town, does not present to the stranger any remarkable features of beauty, unless in the varying undulations of the Downs, that bound the view at an average distance of about five miles. From the harbour of Newhaven to the town is an extended level, destitute of wood, `but affording excellent pasturage for the numerous herds of cattle that seem to stud this rich and green carpeting. The western division of what are properly called the South Downs, lying between the river Adur and the Ouse, forms by its termination at Newhaven, the south and south-western margin to this capacious basin; the Downs variously decline towards the north-east, whilst near their base, and skirting the level, are the villages of Iford, Rodmill, Southese, Telscombe, Piddinghoe, and the town of Newhaven. The south-east and eastern boundary of the levels is made by the rise of the Firle range of Downs, and the Cliffe Hills.

The scenery on the north of the town is at once romantic and beautiful. From the elevated station on the Castle Banks, the eye takes in a wide stretch of country of a very diversified character. To the westward, the bold and precipitous escarpment of the Offham hills, displaying their chalky texture in the laborious excavations that art has for centuries been making, and girt mid

way from their summits by a zone of trees that skirt the road to Offham, finely contrasts with the fertile levels at the base, through which the flexuous Ouse rolls its waters towards the sea. This alluvial plain extends for upwards of a mile north-west of the town; and half encircling the headland south of Hamsey, continues gradually lessening in its breadth as far as Barcombe. Beyond the levels to the north-west, the prospect is bounded by the rising grounds in the neighbourhood of Offham and Hamsey: but to the north and north-east the view is unimpeded over the Weald of Sussex, till the Reigate Hills and the proud eminence of Crowborough rise, somewhat dimly seen, and give a fine finishing to the spacious landscape. This vast tract, included between the Surrey hills and the South Downs, is made up of gentle hill and dale, undulating in all directions, but when viewed from some of the neighbouring Downs, it assumes the appearance of a woody plain. This appearance is occasioned by a practice common in all parts of the Weald of leaving around each small inclosure a shaw, or hedge-row several yards in thickness, which, seen obliquely from an eminence, gives to the country the appearance of a thick and almost unbroken forest.

Anterior to the Norman conquest, the Weald was one vast wood, stretching from east to west, according to Asserius, 120 miles, and from north to south not less than 30 miles. It extends from Romney Marsh, in Kent, to West Meon in Hampshire, running across the whole county of Sussex. This thick and impermeable forest was named by the Romans Anderida Sylva, by the Britons Coit Andred, by the Saxons Andredswald, Andredslege, Andredsbergh, and during what is called the Heptarchy, Sylva Communis, and Saltus Regalis, the common wood, and royal chase. In those times it was a dreary and pathless forest, abounding in thickets and groves of oak, under whose shades herds of wild deer gamboled, and droves of swine fed. Waterdown, Ashdown, Tilgate, Worth, and St. Leonard's forests still continue uncultivated portions of this unpeopled wild', the far greater part of it however is now in an excellent state of cultivation, and produces in abundance wheat, oats, barley, rye, grass, clover, turnips, beans, and in the eastern districts, fine hops, whilst the pastures are in general extremely rich and fertile. According to Mr. Young, the arable and pasture

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Nothing can be more various than the soil of the Weald. In the range of black mountainous land, which stretches from the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, under the names of Waterdown, Ashdown, Tilgate, and St. Leonard's Forests, the soil is generally bad; a considerable part incorrigible at any expense that will repay the cultivator, and would be most profitable for the growth of birch. But the country between that range

and the South Downs, contains much good land, rich sandy loam, and fertile clay, generally mixed with some sand; capable of producing every kind of crop."-Young's Agricultural Survey of Sussex, Appendix, p. 463.

'How different its present from its ancient state, when

"No sounding axe presumed those trees to bite, Coeval with the world,"