iv 
SELBORNE. 
where one likes best to find them, that is, where the trees thrive 
best, and yet occupy those portions of the soil which from 
steepness or other qualities are least available for agricultural 
purposes. 
The carriage road from Alton to Selborne is rather circuitous. 
It is the Southampton road for about five miles to Tisted ; and 
then there is a winding country road of between three and four 
miles more to Selborne. The Southampton road is good, but the 
country road is very bad, lying along a winding hollow from 
which little or nothing can be seen ; and by this approach there 
is no view of Selborne till one arrives at the village itself, and 
even there one can scarcely believe that it is a village at all, 
until the Playstow and the church are arrived at. Even here 
the twist of the road, or street as it is termed, takes off every 
thing like a view, and thus, if one wishes to receive the meanest 
first impression possible of Selborne, the most certain way 
of succeeding is to come to it by this the carriage road. The 
old carriage road across the hills from Alton is rather worse. It 
enters the village at the same point with the road from Tisted ; 
and all the way from Harteley, which is at least two miles, the 
traveller sees little, save a narrow stripe of the sky, and steep 
banks, almost perpendicular, so near to each other that one 
carriage cannot pass another except at particular points, and 
presenting a mass of tangled roots interspersed with shivered 
rocks. This is one of the "deep lanes" described by White as being 
peculiarly characteristic of this part of the country. It is indeed 
the deepest of the whole, being eighteen or twenty feet near 
the Selborne end, and it continues not less than ten feet until 
Selborne is fairly out of view. The other approach from the 
eastward, from Woolmer Forest across the Temple farm, is also in 
a deep lane, not quite so deep as the former, and not so much 
tangled with brushwood ; but still deep enough to put the ob- 
taining of a general view of Selborne out of the question. The 
only road at all available for a carriage, from which the village or 
any part of it can be seen, is that from the south, which comes 
twining round the south-eastern extremity of Selborne Hill, but 
from this the village is not worth looking at ; so that, though 
viewed as a whole Selborne is a very beautiful place, there is no 
possibility of obtaining even a tolerable first or general view of it 
and at the same time enjoying the luxury of a carriage. Hence, 
to understand and enjoy Selborne properly, the visitor must con- 
