Page:Highways and Byways in Sussex.djvu/284

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THE OUSE VALLEY
CHAP.

evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation.


The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a blue effect that is, I believe, peculiar to the district. In the sketches of a Brighton painter in water colours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who has worked much at Rodmell, the spirit of the river valleys of Sussex is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of freshness.

Rodmell.

Horsfield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the mention of the Lewes river, quotes a passage from "The Task":

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted.