My Garden Acquaintance

ONE of the most delightful books in my father's library was White's Natural History of Selborne. For me it has rather gained in charm with years. I used to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure I found in it, but as I grow older I begin to detect some of the simple expedients of this natural magic. Open the book where you will, it takes you out of doors. In our broiling July weather one can walk out with this genially garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Honorable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not know whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first read him, I have walked over some of his favorite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes rather than by any recollection of actual and personal vision. The book has also the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never to have had any harder work to do than to study the habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of his peaches on the wall. His volumes are the journal of Adam in Paradise,
Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.
It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. It is vastly better than to
See great Diocletian walk In the Salonian garden's noble shade,
for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the noises of Rome, while here the world has no entrance. No rumor of the revolt of the American Colonies seems to have reached him. The natural term of an hog's life has more interest for him than that of an empire. Burgoyne may surrender and welcome; of what consequence is that compared with the fact that we can explain the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over to scratch themselves with one claw ? All the couriers in Europe spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. White's little Chartreuse;(1) but the arrival of the house-martin a day earlier or later than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all his correspondents.