SELBORNE 287 



To return to my walk. At last the aspect of the 

 country changed : in place of brown heath, with 

 gloomy fir and furze, there was cheerful verdure of 

 grass and deciduous trees, and the straight road 

 grew deep and winding, running now between hills, 

 now beside woods, and hop-fields, and pasture lands. 

 And at length, wet and tired, I reached Selborne 

 the remote Hampshire village that has so great a 

 fame. 



To very many readers a description of the place 

 would seem superfluous. They know it so well, 

 even without having seen it ; the little, old-world 

 village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill, 

 or Hanger, clothed to its summit with beech- wood as 

 with a green cloud ; the straggling street, the Plestor, 

 or village green, an old tree in the centre, with a 

 bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on 

 of a summer evening. And, close by, the grey 

 immemorial church, with its churchyard, its grand 

 old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts, 

 rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower. 



I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I 

 need it. Seeing the Selborne swifts, I thought how a 

 century and a quarter ago Gilbert White wrote that 

 the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the 

 village, summer after summer, was nearly always 



