HILLS. 271 



LETTER LXXXVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE. 



Mugire videbis 



Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos." 



WHEN I was a boy, I used to read, with astonish- 

 ment and implicit assent, accounts in Baker's Chro- 

 nicle of walking hills and travelling mountains. John 

 Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the credit that was 

 given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein 

 of humour, peculiar to the author of the Splendid 

 Shilling : 



" I nor advise, nor reprehend, the choice 

 Of Marcley Hill ; the apple no where finds 

 A kinder mould: yet 'tis unsafe to trust 

 Deceitful ground : who knows but that, once more, 

 This mount may journey, and, his present site 

 Forsaking, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 

 Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange 

 For law debates !" 



But, when I came to consider better, I began 

 to suspect that, though our hills may never have 

 journeyed far, yet that the ends of many of them 

 have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, 

 leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems to 

 have been the case with Nore and Whetham Hills, 

 and especially with the ridge between Harteley 

 Park and Ward-le-ham, where the ground has slid 

 into vast swellings and furrows, and lies still in such 

 romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for from 

 any other cause. A strange event, that happened 

 not long since, justifies our suspicions ; which, though 



