NOVEMBER 229 



from the tree-tops, show as moving specks of bluish- 

 grey against the dark, coppery background of the 

 beeches. The trees are well-grown, shapely specimens, 

 recalling the eulogy of White on this " the most lovely 

 of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind 

 or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous 

 boughs." Following a sort of track along the top of 

 the hill, and down its further side, the corner of Selborne 

 Hanger appears, and a few of the houses of the village, 

 some half a mile away. At the entrance to the village 

 a spring gushes out, which it is easy to recognise as the 

 old Well-head, " that fine perennial fount, little 

 influenced by drought or wet seasons," now meta- 

 morphosed into a handsome brass fountain with a 

 trough at which the villagers may fill their pails. The 

 single street, of which the hamlet consists, straggles for 

 perhaps half a mile north-west from this point, the 

 church and more interesting part, so far as we are 

 concerned, lying at its further extremity. The cottages 

 are with scarcely an exception of a very humble order, 

 and the sights and sounds are those of a thousand other 

 English villages — the inn, with its swinging sign and 

 the waggoner's team halting in the road before it, the 

 fold-yard where the cattle stand knee-deep in straw, 

 the smithy under whose porch, curiously supported 

 by three pollard lime-trees, the sparks are flying, the 

 village shop, which seems to sell everything from biscuits 

 to boot-laces, and lastly the modest school-house, 



