144 GILBEET WHITE OF SELBOENE i764 



Part of this wall stands to this day. The inscrip- 

 tion is " G. W., 1761." Contented though he seems 

 to have been in his Eveless Eden, his thoughts must 

 have recurred to the subject of matrimony ; for on 

 September 14th, 1764, his friend Mulso writes : — 



f* I find by your hints that you are determined not to die 

 an old Batchelour, if you can help it ; tho' you are not yet 

 fixed. Well, speed you well ! but look well about you ; 

 consider you are beyond your octavum lustrum, which, tho' it 

 is (/ hope) not quite time to leave off the Ladies, is full time 

 to begin with them." 



The obstacle to matrimony was clearly the fact 

 that unless he accepted a college living, his fortune, 

 without his Fellowship, which would of course have 

 been vacated by marriage, was insufficient to support 

 a family ; and to accept preferment would have 

 probably involved leaving his home and all its be- 

 longings at Selborne. Just at this time (at the end 

 of 1764) the college living of Cholderton, in Wilts, 

 on the borders of Hants, fell vacant. In January, 

 1765, Mulso writes: — 



" You have been upon the ramble a good while, and I have 

 had no precise account yet of your Eeturn to Selborne ; but 

 from the season of the year I guess that you are at home. 

 To say truth, from a hint in your last letter, and your patient 

 acceptance of my hint about matrimony, I suspected that 

 your journey to London had a view to that change of your 

 condition ; especially as you show an inclination to detach 

 yourself from College by accepting of so moderate a living 

 as Cholderton. ... If you can be dispensed with for re- 

 siding at Cholderton, any little thing added to your own 



