xiv SELBORNE 
faded and its transparency is nearly gone, are also met with. 
Among the most durahle remains are some paving-tiles (whether 
Venetian or Dutch we are unable to say), which now form the 
floor of a summer-house in the farmer's garden. They are squares 
of small size, of a sort of cinnamon-brown colour, very hard and 
compact, and have been marked with various rude devices in a 
sort of white enamel, let into hollows in the substance, but 
decayed in many places. No monument, nor any inscription of 
consequence, has been met with, at least in very modern times, so 
that there are few religious houses of which the memory has more 
completely perished than Selborne Priory. A fine uniform grassy 
turf now stretches unbroken over both monk and monument, and 
the successors of the holy brothers are sleek black pigs and fine, 
fat, and fair geese ! which might have done honour to the refectory 
even in its proudest days. Herein there might be some matter 
for meditation on the melancholy subject of mutability, but this 
we leave to the discretion of the reader ; and shall only add that 
whoever shall visit this phantom remain of a priory, and fatigue 
himself in quest of that which is not to be seen, will find the in- 
mates of the priory farm intelligent and polished ; and, if he so 
list, he may refresh himself, unsolicited on his part, with as choice 
a draught of October as ever brimmed in a glass. Whether the 
spirit of some quondam prior, of rosy face and ample rotundity, 
lingers to preside over the farmer's mash-tun, we know not, but 
truly there is a spirit there which either monk or layman might 
be proud to canonize. 
From the Priory, he who wishes to see all about Selborne will 
naturally proceed to the Temple Hill, in doing which he must 
thread the mazes of a part of the Temple Hanger; the walk 
round the top of the Temple Hill commands a very good 
view of the surrounding country ; and it is interesting in some 
parts in consequence of the extreme steepness of the bank 
upon which the wood called the Temple Hanger is situated. The 
prevailing wood here is oak, but the trees are not of large size, 
and they are interspersed with an under-growth of hazel, bram- 
bles, and various other shrubs, giving a tangled character to 
the surface, quite diflferent from the almost total absence of surface 
vegetation which one meets with in Selborne Hanger, where, ex- 
cept a few cryptogamous plants, there is little to be met with 
deserving the name of surface vegetation. 
