Bucksted, Horsted, Maresfield, clearly indicate that it was devoted to the chase, that passion of our countrymen in all ages, whether indulged in by kings or nobles, with a total disregard in other days for the welfare and the rights of their fellow-men, or boldly followed by the daring outlaw and his band of bowmen, or, as is now the case, sometimes furtively and sometimes audaciously practised by the poacher and his gang.
   The name of Cowden, like that of the old town of East Grinstead, a few miles off, implies a spot of green pasture, in the former case placed in a valley, and showing that it was applied to the support of animals far more useful to man than stags and deer; and it fully justifies its appellation. The village, which has in a remarkable degree that appearance of comfort and cleanliness which may be fairly claimed generally for the villages of Kent, though seated on rising ground, is surrounded with hills which overlook it, and the greenness of the meadows in which it stands is very striking. It would be difficult to find a lovelier view than that from the garden-walk of the parsonage, and impossible to meet with possessors of such enjoyments more anxious to share them with their friends and neighbours, than is happily the case with the kind and hospitable owners of it. Close behind the parsonage stands the church, with its lofty spire and tower,—if so it may be called, for it seems to be all spire seated upon a framework of timber. There are many steeples in Kent, and many more in the Weald of Sussex, formed of this material; but there are none, probably, where both the steeple and the base from which it springs are, as is the case at Cowden, covered with wood.^{1
   1} In. the churchyard there are the following simple and touching lines upon, the tombstone of an infant:—
          " She laid him in his little grave;
              ''T was hard to lay him there,
            When spring was putting forth its flowers,
               And everything was fair."