CHAPTER X.
PETWORTH Pulborough and its past--Stopham--Fittleworth--The natural advantages of the Swan--Petworth's feudal air--An historical digression naming many Percies--The third Earl of Egremont--The Petworth pictures--Petworth Park--Cobbett's opinion--The vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens--Tillington's use to business men--A charming epitaph--Noah Mann of the Hambledon Club.
Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre, but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail (changing at Pulborough), or by road through Bury, Fittleworth, and Egdean.
[Sidenote: AN ANCIENT FORTRESS] Pulborough is now nothing: once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stane Street for Rome.

The fort was on a mound west of the railway, corresponding with the church mound on the east.

Here probably was a catapulta and certainly a vigilant garrison.

Pulborough has no invader now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her feet into a silver sea, of which Pulborough is the northern shore and Amberley the southern.

The Dutch _polder_ are not flatter or greener than are these intervening meadows.