we experience too, and because of him with something of his
love, his interest and carefulness. What other book ever written upon
Natural History can we read, who are not Naturalists, over and over and
over again, and for its own sake, not for the myriad facts he gathered
through a long lifetime, the acute observation and record of which have
won him the homage of his fellow scientists, but for the pure human and
literary pleasure we find there, a pleasure the like of which is to be
found nowhere else in such books in the same satisfying quantity, and
at all, only because of him.

And so on the next morning the first place I went to see was The Wakes,
the house where this great and dear lover of England of my heart lived,
dying there in 1793, to lie in his own churchyard, his grave marked by
a simple headstone bearing his initials "G.W." and the date. In the
church is a tablet to him and his brother Benjamin, who has also placed
there in memory of him the seventeenth century German triptych over
the altar. But he needs no memorial from our hands; all he loved,
Selborne itself in all its beauty, the exquisite country round it, the
hills, the valleys, the woods and the streams are his monument, the
very birds in their songs remind us of him, and there is not a walk
that is not the lovelier because he has passed by. Do you climb up
through the Hanger and admire the beeches there? It is he who has told
us what to expect, loving the beech like a father, "the most lovely of
all forest trees whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its
glossy foliage or graceful pendulous boughs." Do you linger in the
Plestor? It is he who tells you of the old oak that stood there, and
was blown down in 1703 "to the infinite regret of the inhabitants and
the vicar who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again;
but all this care could not avail; the tree sprouted for a time then
withered and died." Or who can pass by Long Lythe without remembering
that it was a favourite with him too. For he loved this place so well,
that as Jacob waited for Rachel so he for Selborne. He had been born
there, where his grandfather being then vicar, aged seventy-two years
and eleven months, he was to die in 1720. He went to school at Farnham
and Basingstoke, and then in 1739 to Oriel College, Oxford, where in
1744 he was elected to a Fellowship. Presently benefice after benefice
was offered him but he refused them all, having made up his mind t