26 JUNE 1909, Page 9

CURRENT LITERATURE.

RAMBLES IN SUSSEX.

Rambles in Sussex. By F. G. Brabant. (Methuen and Co. Cs.)—The delectable county of Sussex has had many appraisers, but none more thorough than Mr. Brabant, who in this volume inventories every hamlet. Whether that is the best way to deal with a county is a matter of opinion; but it may be doubted if such a title as "Rambles" is quite suitable when such a method • The Problem, of Logic. By W. R. Boyce Gibson, IL A, (Oxon.), Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of London; with the Co-operation of Augusta 'Klein. London: A. sud C. Black. [12s. 6d. net.] is followed. The true rambler is more in the hands of chance and whim. Mr. Brabant is too purposeful for a rambler ; " investi- gator" fits him more closely. His fidelity to his theme is admirable, and he writes with perfect clarity ; but he lacks alike the synthetic vision which gave us Mr. Kipling's Sussex poem, the pantheistic rapture of Mr. Hudson, the lyrical devotion of Mr. Belloo, and that joy of the discoverer which made the late Louis Jennings so pleasant a companion in the South Downs. We return, in fact, to our first word : Mr. Brabant inventories the county. To find any omission of fact would be a difficult task ; topography is fortified by history and literature at every turn, and the presence of reproductions of the Mimed-Hood Turners, commissioned by old John Fuller of Rose Hill Park, was a very happy thought. With so large a programme and so little space, Mr. Brabant naturally has to be concise ; hence he often merely makes mention of a fact worthy of more attention and passes on. To take an example, he refers, near Angmering, to "the celebrated Palmer triplets, all of which were knighted by Henry VIII.," and says no more. But the interest of the legend as told and cherished locally is that they were born on three successive Sundays, and the interest to the psychologist centres in the feelings of the father as the fourth Sunday drew near. We should have liked Mr. Brabant's pages butter had he found time to loiter and enlarge, Perhaps some day he will do so, for since the present work is, he tells us, an expansion of his very compact " Little Guido" to Sussex published 13017343 years ago, this in time may grow into a Sussex itinerary at once more leisurely and more discursive.