14 FEBRUARY 1936, Page 36

For thirty years and more Mr. E. V. Lucas' Highways

and Byways in Sussex has been a classic guide, historian and friend to every traveller in that county, and no one would want to see it changed if the scenes and sites it treats of had not changed themselves. When Mr. Lucas' volume first appeared Mr. Kipling had not written Sussex by the Sea, nor Mr. Belloc The South Country. Bognor had not acquired its Regis, and Peacehaven (" the ugly and treeless settlement of Peacehaven ") had not erupted in the vicinity of Rottingdean. Of all this and much more—of the Glynde- bourne Opera 'House and the death of William Robinson of Gravetye, so up to date is he—Mr. Lucas takes account, in his revised edition (Macmillan, 7s. 6d.). • But the funda- mental difference between the Sussex of 1904 and the Sussex of 1935 is wrought by the advent of the motor. Mr. Lucas wrote originally for the walker who got his start. by train and then depended on himself. The car has changed every- thing, for even if it will not take you to the ridge of the Downs it will take you to any point along their foot. There are no more any " little 'lost Down churches," for some road leads to all of them. Yet the Downs themselves remain inviolate even to the car, and what was written of them thirty years ago needs no chaoge worth talking of today. But the Downs are the exception. tempora ntutantur ;

' Lucas inntatur in ills. Fortunately the change is only

necessary adaptation. In all essentials the:E. Vis L. of the new edition is the:E.- V. L. of the old.