OBELISKS. 217 



within sight of some window in the common sitting parlour; 

 because men, at that dead season of the year, are usually within 

 doors at the close of the day ; while that for the latter might be 

 fixed for any given spot in the garden or outlet : whence the 

 owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's evening, the 

 utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the season 

 of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but to 

 place these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly 

 limb of the sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter helio- 

 trope to the west of it on the shortest day ; and that the whole 

 disc of the sun, at the longest day, might exactly at setting also 

 clear the summer heliotrope to the north of it. 



By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is 

 no such thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the 

 shortest day, the owner would, every clear evening, see the disc 

 advancing, at its setting, to the westward of the object; and, 

 from the longest day, observe the sun retiring backwards every 

 evening at its setting, towards the object westward, till, in a 

 few nights, it would set quite behind it, and so by degrees to 

 the west of it : for when the sun comes near the summer solstice, 

 the whole disc of it would at first set behind the object ; after a 

 time the northern limb would first appear, and so every night 

 gradually more, till at length the whole diameter would set 

 northward of it for about three nights ; but on the middle night 

 of the three, sensibly more remote than the former or following. 

 When beginning its recess from the summer 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 HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



Selborne. 



-Mugire videbis 



Sub pedibus terrain, et descendere montibus ornos." 



WHEN I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and im- 

 plicit 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. 



