518 



It was a morbid fancy of Knapp's to remain incognito : we know 

 not whether he subsequently avowed the authorship of the 'Journal.' 

 Our author has a similar fancy. His object in preserving the pseu- 

 donym is not very apparent. The veil he wears is so transparent that 

 no one will mistake the man. Every page of the work evinces a 

 thorough knowledge of the locality ; such a knowledge as can only 

 be acquired by long residence : an intimate and friendly acquaintance 

 with the inhabitants ; a keen relish for and proficiency in field sports ; 

 a complete acquaintance with the several branches of Natural His- 

 tory, Zoology, Botany, and Geology ; and, finally, the possession of 

 a fluent and highly graphic pen. Godalming must be peculiarly rich 

 in good neighbours, good sportsmen, good naturalists, and good wri- 

 ters, if there is any difficulty in laying a hand on the shoulder of 

 Rusticus and saying "thou art the man." 



The volume has found such favour in the eyes of the critics, and 

 the extracts have been so voluminous, that it is difficult to select a 

 page that has not been already reproduced in most of our leading 

 journals : we select the following as not yet hackneyed, we presume 

 because not considered equally striking with the rest ; but there is 

 something peculiarly agreeable to us in its truthfulness and unas- 

 suming simplicity. 



" In many places among our little hills, we have deep hollow 

 sandy lanes, with steep banks, and great thick hedges on each side 

 a-top ; hedges run to seed, as it were, and here and there grown into 

 trees — gnarled oak, bushy rough-coated maples, and so forth — trees, 

 in fact, that, stretching their arms from both sides of the way, shake 

 hands over your head, and form a kind of canopy of boughs. In some 

 spots the polypody, twisting and interlacing its creeping scaly stem 

 with the tough half-exposed roots of hazel, maple, oak, and hawthorn, 

 grows in such luxuriance and profusion, that its gold-dotted fronds 

 hang by thousands — aye, hundreds of thousands — over the stumps 

 and roots, forming the most graceful of coverings. Here and there 

 are great tufts of hart's-tongue, with its bright, broad, shining, 

 wavy leaves. Here and there, where water has filtered through 

 chinks in the sand-stone, so as to keep up a streak of moisture down 

 the bank, we have lady-fern and a host of mosses. Here and there, 

 in holes — little cavernous recesses— the face of the damp sand or sand- 

 stone is powdered over with a diversity of lichens. Here and there 

 the lithe snake-like honeysuckle twines round the straight, upright, 

 young stems of the nut-tree, cutting deeply into their substance, and 

 forcing them out of their stiff propriety into strange corkscrew forms: — 



