OF SELBORNE. 295 



LETTER XXVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, Jan. 8, 1776. 



IT is the hardest thing in the world to shake off super- 

 stitious prejudices: they are sucked in, as ft were, with 

 our mother's milk ; and, growing up with us at a time 

 when they take the fastest hold and make the most 

 lasting impressions, become so interwoven into our very 

 constitutions, that the strongest good sense is required 

 to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder, there- 

 fore, that the lower people retain them their whole lives 

 through, since their minds are not invigorated by a 

 liberal education, and therefore not enabled to make 

 any efforts adequate to the occasion. 



Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we 

 enter on the superstitions of this district, lest we should 

 be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of practices 

 too gross for this enlightened age. 



But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do 

 well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 

 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they 

 seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, 

 and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of 

 witchcraft ; and, by trying experiments, drowned them 

 in a horse-pond. 



In a farm-yard, near the middle of this village, stands 

 at this day, a row of pollard- ashes, which, by the seams 

 and long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show 

 that, in former times, they have been cleft asunder. 

 These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and 

 held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped 

 naked, were pushed through the apertures, under a per- 

 suasion that, by such a process, the poor babes would 

 be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the operation 



