o
live and die at Selborne. Selborne must then have been a very secluded
place, the nearest town, Alton, often inaccessible in winter one may
think, judging from the description Gilbert White gives of the "rocky
hollow lane" that led thither, but it is perhaps to this very fact that
we owe more than a few of those immortal pages ever living and ever
new. Since he was cut off from men he was able to give himself wholly
to nature. He is less a part of the mere England of his day than any
man of that time; he belonged only to England of my heart. Yet the
events of his time, though they touched him so little, were neither few
nor unimportant. The year of his birth was the year of the South Sea
Bubble. When he was a year old the great Duke of Marlborough died. His
eighth birthday fell in the year which closed the eyes of Sir Isaac
Newton. He was twenty-five in the "forty-five," when Prince Charles
Edward held Edinburgh after Preston Pans. He saw the change in the
calendar, the conquest of India by Clive, the victory and death of
Wolfe at Quebec the annexation of Canada, the death of Chatham, the
loss of the American Colonies, the French Revolution. And how little
all this meant to him!

But anything connected with Selborne interested him, and he wrote of
and studied its "antiquities" as well as its "natural history." Nor
were these antiquities so negligible as one might think. In his day the
church was still an interesting building, and he has left us an
interesting account of it. But he does not forget to tell us, too, of
the Augustinian Priory of Selborne, that was founded in 1233 and stood
to the east of the village, the way to it lying through his beloved
Long Lythe, and the site of which is now occupied by Priory Farm, a few
ruins remaining. Nothing, indeed, that concerned his beloved village
was to him ungrateful. It is, without doubt, this careful love of his
for the things that were his own, at his door, common things if you
will, common only in England of my heart, that has endeared him to
innumerable readers, many of whom have never set foot upon our shores
and would only not be utter strangers here if they did, because of him.
Such at least is the only explanation I can give of his immortality,
his constant appeal to all sorts and conditions of men.

Day by day as I wandered through the lanes and the woods that he had
loved with so wonderful and unconscious an affection, in a repose that
we have lost and a quiet