has been lost of those who first exploited them.  Nor is Chanctonbury, though it cannot boast of mines such as these, less astonishing or less ancient.  The camp set there following the contour of the hill can only have been one of the most important in south-east England.  It commands the camps at Cissbury, the Devil’s Dyke, High Down and White Hawk, the whole breadth of the Weald lay beneath it and a signal displayed upon Leith Hill upon the North Downs could easily be answered from this noble mountain; Mount Caburn itself was not more essentially important.

It has been thought that the Romans may have used Chanctonbury, but if so they have left but little mark of their occupation, and indeed, though the Downs as a whole far off are stamped with so Roman a character, there is but one spot in their whole length where we may say; here certainly the Legions have been.  That spot lies upon the last division of the Downs towards the west, the line of hills which stands between Chichester and the Weald.

It is certain that the Romans were, in Sussex, most at home on that great sea plain towards which the Downs slope so gradually southward.  Here indeed they built their town of Regnum, and perhaps towards the end of their occupation of Britain they laid out the only purely military highway which they built here from Regnum to London Bridge.  This great Roman road, known as the Stane Street, coming out of the eastern gate of Chichester, takes the Downs as an arrow flies, crossing them between Boxgrove and Bignor, nor is the work of Rome even to-day wholly destroyed, for there under Bignor Hill we may still see the pavement of their Way, while at Bignor itself we have perhaps the best remains of a Roman villa left to us in Sussex.

[Illustration:  THE DOWNS]

But though all these marks and signs, the memory and the ruins not only of our forefathers, but of those our saviours who drew us within the government of the Empire so that we are to-day what we are and not as they who knew not the Romans, make the Downs sacred to us, it is not only or chiefly for this that we love them or that in any thought of Southern England, when far away, it is these great hills which first come back into the mind and bring the tears to our eyes.  We love them for themselves, for their beauty and their persistence certainly, but really because we have always known them and they more than any other thing here in the south remind us and are a symbol of our home.  A man of South England must always have them in his heart

for every day of his childhood they have filled his eyes.  And to-day more especially they stand as a sign and a symbol.  For not only are they the first great hills which the Londoner sees, but they offer the nearest relief and repose from the modern torture and noise of that enormous place which has ceased to be a city and become a mere asylum of landless men.  From the mean and crowded streets he seeks