2 MY GARDEN ACQUAINTANCE. 



" Annihilating all that's made 

 To a green thought iia a green shade." 



It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. 

 It is vastly better than to 



" See great Diocletian walk 

 In the Satonian garden's noble shade," 



for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the 

 noises of Rome, while here the world has no entrance. 

 No rumor of the revolt of the American Colonies seems 

 to have reached him. " The natural term of an hog's 

 life " has more interest for him than that of an empire. 

 Burgoyne may surrender and welcome ; of what conse- 

 quence is that compared with the fact that we can explain 

 the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over 

 " to scratch themselves with one claw " ? All the couriers 

 in Europe spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. 

 White's little Chartreuse ; but the arrival of the house- 

 martin a day earlier or later than last year is a piece of 

 news worth sending express to all his correspondents. 



Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent 

 humor, so much the more delicious because unsuspected 

 by the author. How pleasant is his innocent vanity in 

 adding to the list of the British, and still more of the 

 Selbornian, fauna! I believe he would gladly have con- 

 sented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile, if by that 

 means the occasional presence within the parish limits of 

 either of these anthropophagous brutes could have been 

 established. He brags of no fine society, but is plainly a 

 little elated by " having considerable acquaintance with 

 a tame brown owl." Most of us have known our share 

 of owls, but few can boast of intimacy with a feathered 

 one. The great events of Mr. White's life, too, have that 

 disproportionate importance which is always humorous. 

 To think of his hands having actually been thought 

 worthy (as neither Willoughby's nor Ray's were) to hold 



