House and Garden 
seen several cen¬ 
turies, and is prob¬ 
ably coeval with the 
church, and there¬ 
fore may be deemed 
an antiquity; the 
body is squat, short, 
and thick, and meas¬ 
ures twenty - three 
feet in the girth, 
supporting a head ot 
suitable extent to its 
bulk. This is a 
male tree, which in 
the spring sheds 
clouds of dust, and 
fills the atmosphere 
around with its far¬ 
ina.” He speaks of 
the same tree again 
in another place, and 
had evidently taken 
the trouble to meas¬ 
ure it. He then 
says it is twenty- 
five feet around. 
The church itself 
dates back, according to White’s reckoning, 
to the time of Henry VI 1 —no great age, 
its chronicler seemed to think—but he con¬ 
cludes that some of its pillars are old enough 
to please any antiquarian, lor they have 
come down from Saxon days, having been 
used, probably, 
to support the walls 
of some earlier 
structure. 
The present in¬ 
habitants of Sel- 
borne are mostly 
the descendants of 
the children who 
are mentioned by 
White, in one of 
his infrequent refer¬ 
ences to the genus 
homo , as being 
numerous in the 
town ; the quaint 
butcher’s shop, with 
its broad porch 
resting on the 
trunks of three 
dignified trees, 
stands opposite to 
the house just as 
it did four gener¬ 
ations ago, and 
the very birds and 
bees and flowers 
of the place seem to have a quiet, prim, 
old-world dignity, as who should say: “We 
come ol distinguished lineage. You will 
find the names of our forefathers men¬ 
tioned in one of the classics of English 
literature.” 
“through a gap in the foliage we 
OBTAINED A VIEW OF THE WHOLE OF 
THIS METROPOLIS OF PEACE” 
The old yew tree at the Selborne church door 
1 99 
