LXXXV1I.] OF SELBORNE. 237 



LETTER LXXXVII. 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



" Mugire videbis 

 Sub pedibus terrain, et descenders montibus ornos." 



(Vmo. JEn. iv. 490, 491.) 



" Earth bellows, 



Trees leave their mountains at her potent call ; 

 Beneath her footsteps groans the trembling ball." 



(PlTT.) 



WHEN I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and 

 implicit assent, accounts in Baker's " Chronicle " of walking hills 

 and travelling mountains. John Philips, in his " Cyder," allude.s 

 to the credit 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 mere 

 This mount may journey, and his present site 

 Forsaken, 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 Wardleham, when; 

 the ground has slid into vast swellings and furrows ; and lies 

 still in such romantic confusion as cannot be accounted for 



