176 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



and, on going up the Hanger, noticed a couple of 

 bicycles lying at the foot of the hill ; then, half-way up 

 I found the cyclists two young ladies resting on the 

 turf by the side of the Zigzag. They were conversing 

 together as I went by, and one having asked some 

 question which I did not hear, the other replied, " Oh 

 no ! he lived a very long time ago, and wrote a history 

 of Selborne. About birds and that." To which the 

 other returned, " Oh .! " and then they talked of some- 

 thing else. 



These ladies had probably got up at four o'clock that 

 morning, and ridden several miles to visit the village 

 and go up the Hanger before breakfast. Later in the 

 day they would be at other places where other Hampshire 

 celebrities, big and little, had been born, or had lived 

 or died Wooton St. Lawrence, Chawton, Steventon, 

 Alresford, Basing, Otterbourne, Buriton, Boldre, and a 

 dozen more ; and one, the informed, would say to her 

 uninformed companion, " Oh dear, no ; he, or she, lived 

 a long, long time ago, somewhere about the eighteenth 

 century or perhaps it was the sixteenth and did 

 something, or wrote fiction, or history, or philosophy, 

 and that." To which the other would intelligently 

 answer, " Oh ! " and then they would remount their 

 bicycles, and go on to some other place. 



Although a large majority of the visitors are of this 

 description, there are others of a different kind the 

 true pilgrims; and these are mostly naturalists who 

 have been familiar from boyhood with the famous 



