Page:Two Sussex archaeologists, William Durrant Cooper and Mark Antony Lower.djvu/48

 Sussex villages—clusters of lowly habitations, some thatched, some tiled, some abutting the street, some standing angularly towards it, all built of flint or boulders. A barn, a stable, a circular pigeon-house, centuries old, with all its denizens (direct descendants of the old manorial pigeons which lived here in the days of the Plantagenets), and an antique gable or two, peer out among the tall elms.' We fancied we met Mr. Lower close by Lewes Castle. I sketched on the margin of my Murray the ample forehead of the unknown, beneath an archaic hat, the keen observant eyes behind archaic spectacles; and shall leave it by will to the Sussex Archæological Society."

When in his prime, his constant devotion to his work, scholastic, literary, archaeological, kept him too much, it may be, engaged and, always talking about the holidays he meant to, but did not, take, when his school vacations arrived, one who knew his habits, Mr. Joseph Ellis, of Brighton, who, as his special intimates only know, is an admirable inditer of good-humoured flings at the amiable foibles of his acquaintances, "poked his fun" at his Lewes friend after the following facetious fashion:—