IV SELBORNE. 



where one likes best to find them, that is, where the trees thrive 

 best, and yet occupy those portions of the soil which from 

 steepness or other qualities are least available for agricultural 

 purposes. 



The carriage road from Alton to Selborne is rather circuitous. 

 It is the Southampton road for about five miles to Tisted ; and 

 then there is a winding country road of between three and four 

 miles more to Selborne. The Southampton road is good, but the 

 country road is very bad, lying along a winding hollow from 

 which little or nothing can be seen ; and by this approach there 

 is no view of Selborne till one arrives at the village itself, and 

 even there one can scarcely believe that it is a village at all, 

 until the Playstow and the church are arrived at. Even here 

 the twist of the road, or street as it is termed, takes off every 

 thing like a view, and thus, if one wishes to receive the meanest 

 first impression possible of Selborne, the most certain way 

 of succeeding is to come to it by this the carriage road. The 

 old carriage road across the hills from Alton is rather worse. It 

 enters the village at the same point with the road from Tisted ; 

 and all the way from Harteley, which is at least two miles, the 

 traveller sees little, save a narrow stripe of the sky, and steep 

 banks, almost perpendicular, so near to each other that one 

 carriage cannot pass another except at particular points, and 

 presenting a mass of tangled roots interspersed with shivered 

 rocks. This is one of the "deep lanes" described by White as being 

 peculiarly characteristic of this part of the country. It is indeed 

 the deepest of the whole, being eighteen or twenty feet near 

 the Selborne end, and it continues not less than ten feet until 

 Selborne is fairly out of view. The other approach from the 

 eastward, from Woolmer Forest across the Temple farm, is also in 

 a deep lane, not quite so deep as the former, and not so much 

 tangled with brushwood ; but still deep enough to put the ob- 

 taining of a general view of Selborne out of the question. The 

 only road at all available for a carriage, from which the village or 

 any part of it can be seen, is that from the south, which comes 

 twining round the south-eastern extremity of Selborne Hill, but 

 from this the village is not worth looking at ; so that, though 

 viewed as a whole Selborne is a very beautiful place, there is no 

 possibility of obtaining even a tolerable first or general view of it 

 and at the same time enjoying the luxury of a carriage. Hence, 

 to understand and enjoy Selborne properly, the visitor must con- 



