DESCEIPTION OF SELBORNE 27 



water emerging from the chalk has hollowed out a 

 little wooded valley, and flows roughly from west 

 to east, past what was in the eighteenth century an 

 old timber-framed vicarage, and its garden with 



". . . its scapes grotesque and wild, 

 High on a mound th' exalted gardens stand. 

 Beneath, deep vallies scoop'd by Nature's hand," * 



past the old church with its low, square tower, and 

 through the meadows — called the long and short 

 lythes — and so past the site of the ruined priory to 

 Farnham and the River Wey. On the south side 

 of this little valley runs the village street of thatched, 

 timber-framed cottages, dominated, a little further 

 south again, by an abrupt hill, perhaps 300 feet in 

 height, clothed with a beech wood, or " Hanger." 

 From the top of this eminence a charmingly timbered, 

 park-like down stretches southwards, and afibrds 

 extensive and very beautiful views in all directions 

 over a hilly country — the long line of the downs 

 above Portsmouth to the south, the hills about Mid- 

 hurst and Haslemere on the east, Wolmer Forest, 

 and Hindhead to the north-east, and the rolling and 

 wooded upland country from Alton towards Alresford 

 on the ^vest, being prominent objects of the view. 

 A land of woods and streams, and therefore an 

 especially good country for birds — a character which 

 it retains to this day. 



Always happy in his quotations, the historian 



* Vide " The Invitation to Selborne," by Gilbert White. 



