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LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN.

CHAPTER 1.

RARLY LIFE.

Hrysrorr is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West
Sussex, not many miles from the Hampshire border. It is
one of the crests that, like wooded islands, dot the great
Valley of the Weald. Near at hand the red housetops of
Midhurst sleep among the trees, while Chichester lies in the
flats a dozen miles away, beyond the steep escarpments of
the South Downs, that here are nearing their western edge.
Heyshott has a high rolling upland of its own, part of the
majestic wall that runs from Beachy Head almost to Portsmouth,
 As the traveller ascends the little’ neighbouring
height of West Lavington, he discerns far off to the left, at
the end of a dim line, the dark clump of sentinel trees ab
Chanctonbury, whence one may look forth over the glistening
 flood of the Channel, or hear the waters beat upon the
shore. The country around Midhurst is sprinkled thinly
with farms and modest homesteads. Patches of dark forest
mingle with green spaces of common, with wide reaches of
heath, with ponds flashing in the sunlight, and with the
white or yellow clearing of the fallows. The swelling turf
of the headland, looking northward across the Weald to the
loved companion downs of Surrey, is broken by soft wooded