170 LITEKAEY VALUES 



much to the interest. The glimpses we get of his 

 own goings and comings — we wish there were more 

 of them. We should like to know what took him 

 to London during that great snowstorm of January, 

 1776, and how he got there, inasmuch as the roads 

 were so blocked by the snow that the carriages from 

 Bath with their fine ladies on their way to attend 

 the Queen's birthday, were unable to get through. 

 " The ladies fretted, and offered large rewards to 

 labourers if they would shovel them a track to Lon- 

 don, but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky 

 to be removed." The parson found the city bedded 

 deep in snow, and so noiseless by reason of it that 

 " it seemed to convey an uncomfortable idea of de- 

 solation." 



When one reads the writers of our own day upon 

 rural England and the wild life there, he finds that 

 they have not the charm of the Selborne naturalist ; 

 mainly, I think, because they go out with deliberate 

 intent to write up nature. They choose their theme ; 

 the theme does not choose them. They love the 

 birds and flowers for the literary effects they can 

 produce out of them. It requires no great talent to 

 go out in the fields or woods and describe in grace- 

 ful sentences what one sees there, — birds, trees, 

 flowers, clouds, streams ; but to give the atmosphere 

 of these things, to seize the significant and interest- 

 ing features and to put the reader into sympathetic 

 communication with them, that is another matter. 



Hence back of all, the one thing that has told 

 most in keeping White's book alive is imdoubtedly 



