XIV SELBORNE. 



faded and its transparency is nearly gone, are also met with. 

 Among the most durable remains are some paving-tiles (whether 

 Venetian or Dutch we are unable to say), which now form the 

 floor of a summer-house in the farmer's garden. They are squares 

 of small size, of a sort of cinnamon-brown colour, very hard and 

 compact, and have been marked with various rude devices in a 

 sort of white enamel, let into hollows in the substance, but 

 decayed in many places. No monument, nor any inscription of 

 consequence, has been met with, at least in very modern times, so 

 that there are few religious houses of which the memory has more 

 completely perished than Selborne Priory. A fine uniform grassy 

 turf now stretches unbroken over both monk and monument, and 

 the successors of the holy brothers are sleek black pigs and fine, 

 fat, and fair geese ! which might have done honour to the refectory 

 even in its proudest days. Herein there might be some matter 

 for meditation on the melancholy subject of mutability, but this 

 we leave to the discretion of the reader ; and shall only add that 

 whoever shall visit this phantom remain of a priory, and fatigue 

 himself in quest of that which is not to be seen, will find the in- 

 mates of the priory farm intelligent and polished ; and, if he so 

 list, he may refresh himself, unsolicited on his part, with as choice 

 a draught of October as ever brimmed in a glass. Whether the 

 spirit of some quondam prior, of rosy face and ample rotundity, 

 lingers to preside over the farmer's mash-tun, we know not, but 

 truly there is a spirit there which either monk or layman might 

 be proud to canonize. 



From the Priory, he who wishes to see all about Selborne will 

 naturally proceed to the Temple Hill, in doing which he must 

 thread the mazes of a part of the Temple Hanger; the walk 

 round the top of the Temple Hill commands a very good 

 view of the surrounding country ; and it is interesting in some 

 parts in consequence of the extreme steepness of the bank 

 upon which the wood called the Temple Hanger is situated. The 

 prevailing wood here is oak, but the trees are not of large size, 

 and they are interspersed with an under-growth of hazel, bram- 

 bles, and various other shrubs, giving a tangled character to 

 the surface, quite different from the almost total absence of surface 

 vegetation which one meets with in Selborne Hanger, where, ex- 

 cept a few cryptogamous plants, there is little to be met with 

 deserving the name of surface vegetation. 



