ROCKY LANE LEADING TO ALTON.
THE WISHING STONE.
Among the singular things in Selborne to which White calls attention are two rocky hollow lanes, one of which leads to Alton. These roads have, by the traffic of ages and the running of water, been worn down through the first stratum of freestone and partly through the second, so that they look more like water-courses than roads. In many places they have thus been sunken as much as eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields alongside, so that torrents rush along them in rainy weather, with miniature cascades on either hand that are frozen into icicles in winter. These lanes, thus rugged and gloomy, affright the timid, but, gladly writes our author, they "delight the naturalist with their various botany." The old mill at Selborne, with its dilapidated windsails, presents a picturesque appearance, and up on the chalk-hills, where there is a far-away view over the pleasant vale beyond, is the Wishing Stone, erected on a little mound among the trees. All these things attracted our author's close attention, and as his parish was over thirty miles in circumference, as may be supposed his investigations covered a good deal of ground. His work is chiefly written in the form of a series of letters to friends, and he occasionally digresses over the border into the neighboring parishes to speak of their peculiarities or attractions. They all had in his day little churches, and the parish church of Greatham, not far from Selborne, is a specimen of the antique construction of the diminutive chapels that his ancestors handed down to their children for places of worship, each surrounded by its setting of ancient gravestones. The History of Selborne shows how the country parson in the olden time, whose flock was small, parish isolated, and visitors few, amused himself; but he has left an enduring monument that grows the more valuable as the years advance. In fact, it is a text-book of natural history; and so complete have been his observations that he not only describes all the plants and animals, birds, rocks, soils, and buildings, but he also has space to devote to the cats of Selborne, and to tell how they prowl in the roadway and mount the tiled roofs to capture the chimney swallows. How he loved his home is shown in the poem with which his work begins. We quote the opening stanza, and also some other characteristic portions of this ode, which describes the attractions of Selborne in the last century:
"See Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round,
The varied valley, and the mountain ground
Wildly majestic: what is all the pride
Of flats with loads of ornament supplied?
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense,
Compared with Nature's rude magnificence.
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still,
The Muse shall hand thee to the beech-grown hill,
To spend in tea the cool, refreshful hour,
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower;
Or where the Hermit hangs his straw-clad cell,
Emerging gently from the leafy dell:
Romantic spot! from whence in prospect lies
Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes;
The pointed spire, the hall, the pasture-plain,
The russet fallow, and the golden grain;
The breezy lake that sheds a gleaming light,
Till all the fading picture fails the sight....
Now climb the steep, drop now your eye below,
Where round the verdurous village orchards blow;
There, like a picture, lies my lowly seat,
A rural, sheltered, unobserved retreat.
Me far above the rest, Selbornian scenes.
The pendant forest and the mountain-greens,
Strike with delight: ... There spreads the distant view
That gradual fades, till sunk in misty blue."
GREATHAM CHURCH.