OF SELBORNE 209 



tropic, it would continue more and more to be hidden 

 every night, till at length it would descend quite behind 

 the object again ; and so nightly more and more to the 

 westward. 



LETTER XLV 



TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES HARRINGTON 



Sel borne. 



" Mugire videbis 

 Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos." 



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," 

 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 

 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 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 it befell not within 



