May it ever
remain secure within sight of the hills, within sight of the sea,
steeped in the Tudor myth, certain in its English heart, that twice two
is not four but anything one likes to make it, nor ever hear ribald
voices calling upon it to decide what after all it stands for in the
world, denying it any longer the consolation it loves best of finding
in the conclusion what is not in the premises, or, as the vulgar might
put it, of having its cake and eating it too.
CHAPTER XVI
SELSEY, BOSHAM AND PORCHESTER
It was my good fortune, while I was in Chichester, to be tempted to
explore the peninsula of Selsey, which most authorities declare to have
no beauty and little interest for the traveller to-day. For St
Wilfrid's sake, I put aside these admonishments, and one morning set
out upon the lonely road to Pagham, across a country as flat as a fen,
of old, as they say, a forest, the forest of Mainwood, and still in
spite of drainage and cultivation very bleak and lonely with marshes
here and there which are still the haunt of all kinds of wild-fowl.
It is only to the man who finds pleasure in the Somerset moors, the
fens of Cambridgeshire or the emptiness of Romney Marsh that this
corner of England will appeal, but to such an one it is full of
interest and certainly not without beauty.
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