MOVING HILLS. 229 



LETTER LXXXVII. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE. 



- Mugire videbis 

 Sub pedibus terrain, et desceudere montibus ornos. 



WHEN I was a boy, I used to read, with astonishment and 

 implicit assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of walking hills 

 and travelling mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes 

 to the credit that was given to such stories with a delicate but 

 quaint vein of humour, peculiar to the author of the Splendid 

 Shilling : 



I nor advise, nor reprehend, the choice 



Of Marcley Hill ; * the apple no where finds 



A kinder mould : yet 'tis unsafe to trust 



Deceitful ground : who knows but that, once more, 



This mount may journey, and, his present site 



Forsaking, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer 



The goodly plants, affording matter strange 



For law debates ! 



But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect 

 that, though our hills may never have journeyed far, yet that 

 the ends of many of them have slipped and fallen away at 

 distant periods, leaving the cliffs bare and abrupt. This seems 

 to have been the case with Nore and Whetham Hills, and 

 especially with the ridge between Harteley Park arid Ward- 

 le-ham, where the ground has slid into vast swellings and 

 furrows, and lies still in such romantic confusion as cannot be 

 accounted for from any other cause. A strange event, that 

 happened not long since, justifies our suspicions ; which, 

 though it befell not within the limits of this parish, yet as it 

 was within the hundred of Selborne, and as the circumstances 

 were singular, may fairly claim a place in a work of this nature, 



* Marcl 

 miles eas 



cley Hill is near the confluence of the Lug and Wye, about six 

 t of Hereford. In the year 1595, it was, after roaring and shaking 

 in a terrible manner for three days together, about six o'clock on Sunday 

 evening, put in motion, and continued moving for eight hours, in which 

 time it advanced upwards of two hundred feet from its first situation, and 

 mounted twelve fathoms higher than it was before. In the place where 

 it set out, it left a gap four hundred feet long, and three hundred anil 

 twenty broad ; and in its progress it overthrew a chapel, together with 

 trees and houses that stood in its way. ED. 



