SELBORNE AND WOLMER FOREST 



THE power of locality to form tastes, and its im- 

 potence to subdue character, are shown with curious 

 completeness in the cases of Gilbert White and William 

 Cobbett. The same district and the same soil for 

 Farnham is only twelve miles from Selborne, and both 

 are lands of beech-hangers and hop-gardens, and both 

 abut on sandy heaths was the birth-place of the 

 authors of the History of Selborne and the Rural 

 Rides. Each formed in youth such binding ties with 

 the land and those that live by it, that he was impelled 

 to revisit the old home and the old scenes, and each 

 has left descriptions of them unmatched by art. But 

 at this point the power of locality ended. White, the 

 contemplative, returned from Oriel and Oxford to 

 become of free will " a stationary man," to spend his 

 days in secure enjoyment and observation of the dis- 

 trict he loved. Cobbett, when, after the third attempt, 

 he had broken free from the ties of his father's farm 

 at Farnham, returned only to look down from the 

 hill-tops on his native land, and then, after " blessing 

 it altogether " in some of the finest descriptive English 



