g-parlour; because men, at that dead
season of the year, are usually within doors at the close of the day;
while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden
or outlet; whence the owner might contemplate, in a fine summer's
evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the
season of the longest days. Now nothing would be necessary but to place
these two objects with so much exactness, that the westerly limb of the
sun, at setting, might but just clear the winter heliotrope to the west
of it on the shortest day; and that the whole disc of the sun, at the
longest day, might exactly at setting also clear the summer heliotrope to
the north of it.

By this simple expedient it would soon appear that there is no such
thing, strictly speaking, as a solstice; for, from the shortest day, the
owner would, every clear evening, see the disc advancing at its setting,
to the westward of the object; and, from the longest day, observe the sun
retiring backwards every evening at its setting, towards the object
westward, till, in a few nights, it would set quite behind it, and so by
degrees, to the west of it; for when the sun comes near the summer
solstice, the whole disc of it would at first set behind the object;
after a time the northern limb would first appear, and so every night
gradually more, till at length the whole diameter would set northward of
it for about three nights; but on the middle night of the three, sensibly
more remote than the former or following. When beginning its recess from
the summer tropic, it would continue more and more to be hidden every
night, till at length it would descend quite behind the object again; and
so nightly more and more to the westward.

LETTER XLV.

" . . . Mugire videbis
Sub bedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos."

SELBORNE.

When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit assent,
accounts in "Baker's Chronicle" of walking hills and travelling
mountains. John Philips, in his "Cyder," alludes to the credit that was
given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein of humour peculiar
to the author of the "Splendid Shilling."

"I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcely Hill; the apple nowhere finds
A kinder mould; yet 'tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground; who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer