OF SELBORNE: 245 



Some time since its discovery, this echo is become totally 

 silent, though the object or hop-kiln remains: nor is there 

 any mystery in this defect ; for the field between is planted 

 as a hop-garden, and the voice of the speaker is totally ab- 

 sorbed and lost among the poles and entangled foliage of 

 the hops. And when the poles are removed in autumn, 

 the disappointment is the same, because a tall quickset 

 hedge, nurtured up for the purpose of shelter to the hop- 

 ground, entirely interrupts the impulse and repercussion of 

 the voice : so that, till those obstructions are removed, no 

 more of its garrulity can be expected. 



Should any gentleman of fortune think an echo in his 

 park, or outlet, a pleasing incident, he might build one at 

 little or no expense. For whenever he had occasion for a 

 new barn, stable, dog-kennel, or the like structure, it would 

 be only needful to erect this building on the gentle declivity 

 of a hill, with a like rising opposite to it, at a few hundred 

 yards' distance; and perhaps success might be the easier 

 ensured, could some canal, lake, or stream intervene. From 

 a seat at the centrum plwnicum, he and his friends might 

 amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle 

 of this loquacious nymph ; of whose complacency and decent 

 reserve more may be said than can with truth of every in- 

 dividual of her sex ; since she is 



" qua nee reticere loquenti, 



Nee prior ipsa loqui didicit resonabilis echo.* 1 



P. S. The classic reader will, I trust, pardon the follow- 

 ing lovely quotation, so finely describing echoes, and so 

 poetically accounting for their causes from popular super- 

 stition : 



" Quae bene quom videas, rationem reddere possis 

 Tute tibi atque aliis, quo pacto per loca sola 

 Saxa pareis formas verborum ex ordine reddant, 

 Palanteis comites quom monteis inter opacos 

 Quserimus, et magna disperses voce ciemus. 

 Sex etiam, aut septem loca vidi reddere voces 

 Unam quom jaceres : ita colles collibus ipsis 

 Verba repulsantes iterabant dicta referre. 

 Haec loca eapripedes Satyros, Nymphasque tenere 

 Finitimi fingunt, et Faunos esse loquuntur ; 

 Quorum noetivago strepitu, ludoque jocanti 



