Mr. Belloc on his native heath is Mr. Belloc at
his best ; and if lie is not literally a Sussex native he can at least claim to have done more to make the county famous than ninety- -nine out of a hundred natives have. His present volume (Cassell, 7s. 6d.) was intended to be an expansion of a youthful sketch or essay on the county, but to rewrite turned out to be easier than to revise, and a new book unintentionally resulted, 'Mr. Belloc is an admirable guide. In his skilful hands the geography of Sussex,-and its history-in relation to its geography, reveal themselves with an inevitability which makes it seem as though they could never have been other than they were ; which, as regards the history, is very likely true. He has, more= over, the gift of summing up the natural characteristics of the county in a sentence—the four belts east and west, con= 'listing of the fertile coastal plain, the Downs behind the :plain, another fertile strip behind the Downs, and, last and most northerly, the wooded and originally trackless Weald. North and south run the rivers, the Arun, the Adur, the Ouse and the Curckmere, and through their valleys today railway or road linkt London- with the 'coast. For centuries the Weald kept Sussex isolated. The great roads (except for the Stane Street in the west) ran north or east of it, and 'it lived its untroubled life in the shadow of its hills. The hills, at least, are unspbiled still, but little else is, in the day of the internal combustion engine Which Mr. Belloc execrates. There may, as he gloomily foresliadows, be worse yet to come. Meanwhile, the wise man will put The County of Susses in his poetEet and on the Brat Erne Saturday climb .to Gumber Hill by Bignor, and tliete; with Mr. Belloc to point out every landmaik, satisfy his soul with the discovery of WWII Slim= ill.
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