32 A SUMMER DAY AT SELBORNE. 



at once you are introduced to the Plestor,* as sweet a scene as could be 

 looked on. In the centre of it, and surrounded by a wooden seat, stands 

 a fine Sycamore, (Acer pseudo-platanus ;) while to the left, and close by 

 the church-yard wall, is a stately Horse Chestnut, (JEsculus hippocasta- 

 nicus.) The cottages are covered by Roses and Honeysuckles, now yielding a 

 glorious perfume, and not a few of these humble cottagers literally "sit under 

 their Vines," if not "their Fig trees." In favourable seasons the Grape 

 perfects its fruit. Proceeding a few yards up, the vicar's house appears, 

 and a little further on the church-yard gate. Stepping in, the noble old 

 Yew tree, (Taxus baccata,) which White so particularly writes of in his 

 Antiquities, (Letter V.,) first attracts your attention. He gives its 

 greatest measurement then as twenty-three feet, whilst it now is twenty- 

 three feet four inches; in good health, pushing out new growths at every 

 extremity. Altogether it is a tree quite equal to those of Borrowdale or 

 Lartan's Vale, and will well bear out the solemn lines of Wordsworth 

 addressed to these. 



"A pillar'd shade, 



Upon whose grassless floor of red brown hue, 



By sheddings from the piercing umbrage tinged 



Perennially — beneath whose sable roof 



Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, deck'd 



With unrejoicing berries, ghastly shapes 



May meet at noontide — Fear and trembling Hope — 



Silence and Foresight — Death the skeleton, 



And Time the shadow — there to celebrate, 



As in a natural temple, scattered o'er 



With altars undisturb'd of massj r stone, 



United worship." 



The church is a primitive looking building with a heavy tiled roof; at 

 the west end a square embattled tower forty-five feet high somewhat 

 relieves its low equal appearance; everything in and around is, however, 

 clean and neat; there is a sacredness brooding over the whole place, mel- 

 lowed by time, that the heart at once responds to, and feels deeply 

 there is something here that the modern church, with its fretted roof, its 

 gilded dome, and too often gilded preacher, cannot produce. Now, as in 

 White's time, the south side of the kirk-yard seems to be the favourite 

 resting-place; but passing over many graves round by the chancel, and on 



* The Plestor, or Pleystow, as White describes it. In the centre of the village, and near 

 the church, is a square piece of ground surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the Plestor. 

 And in Letter X. (Antiquities) he further states that in 1271 Sir Adam Gurdon, in con- 

 junction with his wife Constantia, granted to the Prior and Convent of Selborne all his 

 claim and right to a certain place, called "La Pleystow," in the village aforesaid, "in 

 liberam, puram, et perpetuam elemosinam." This Pleystow, (in Saxon Plegestow or 

 Plegstow,) locus ludorum, or play-place, is a level ai - ea near the church, of about forty- 

 four yards by thirty-six, and is now known by the name of the Plestor. 



