OF SELBORNE. 383 



sound, rushing along the Lythe and Comb Wood, was 

 very grand : but it was at the Hermitage that the echoes 

 and repercussions delighted the hearers ; not only filling 

 the Lythe with the roar, as if all the beeches were tear- 

 ing up by the roots ; but turning to the left, they per- 

 vaded the vale above Comb Wood Ponds ; and after a 

 pause seemed to take up the crash again, and to extend 

 round Harteley Hangers, and to die away at last among 

 the coppices and coverts of Ward le ham. It has been 

 remarked before that this district is an Anathoth, a place 

 of responses or echoes, and therefore proper for such 

 experiments : we may farther add, that the pauses in 

 echoes, when they cease and yet are taken up again, 

 like the pauses in music, surprise the hearers, and have 

 a fine effect on the imagination. 



The gentleman above mentioned has just fixed a 

 barometer in his parlour at Newton Valence. The tube 

 was first filled here (at Selborne) twice with care, when 

 the mercury agreed and stood exactly with my own; 

 but being filled again twice at Newton, the mercury 

 stood, on account of the great elevation of that house, 

 three- tenths of an inch lower than the barometers at 

 this village,, and so continues to do, be the weight of 

 the atmosphere what it may. The plate of the baro- 

 meter at Newton is figured as low as 27 ; because in 

 stormy weather the mercury there will sometimes de- 

 scend below 28. We have supposed Newton House to 

 stand two hundred feet higher than this house : but if 

 the rule holds good, which says that mercury in a baro- 

 meter sinks one-tenth of an inch for every hundred feet 

 elevation, then the Newton barometer, by standing 

 three-tenths lower than that of Selborne, proves that 

 Newton House must be three hundred feet higher than 

 that in which I am writing, instead of two hundred. 



It may not be impertinent to add, that the barometers 

 at Selborne stand three-tenths of an inch lower than 

 the barometers at South Lambeth : whence we may 

 conclude that the former place is about three hundred 



