GILBERT WHITE'S PASTORAL. Queruntur in silvis aves. HORACE: Epode II. Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep Then the hurry and alarm When the beehive casts its swarm; Acorns ripe down-pattering While the Autumn breezes sing. KEATS: Fancy. EW books of comparatively recent times FEW have obtained greater recognition than the volume presented to the world under the familiar title, The Natural History Of Selborne. To very many who are unacquainted with it, this highly interesting register is a synonym for all that is fresh and lovely in Nature, a bucolic and idyl of the country-side; the peer of the works of the Walden recluse and those of the prosepoet of the Wiltshire Downs. So often is Gilbert White referred to with some such import that it may be seriously questioned whether he is read as largely as we suppose, and whether the verdict respecting his painstaking chronicle, expressed years ago and since persistently reiterated, has not been tacitly accepted without personal knowledge on the part of many by whom it is so highly extolled. Or, on the other hand, White may be known to the many, and Thoreau and Jefferies to the relatively few. His name is a stock-in-trade with reviewers; but while so often referred to, he is rarely quoted. To the majority of those who do not know him personally, a perusal of the volume, it is not improbable, would prove somewhat of a disappointment. For despite the praise it has received and justly merits, it is a book unlikely to please the average reader, - the less so if he is not an ardent ornithologist or zoologist. Embracing mineralogy, zoology, meteorology, ornithology, entomology, and botany, with, constant reference to ætiology, it may be termed a cyclopædia of English natural his tory, presented in epistolary form. It is the exhaustively compressed report of a statistician, the monograph of a life of studious privacy led in a retired parish of Hampshire amid surroundings most conducive to the writer's favourite pursuit. And though Selborne is but sixty miles removed from London and is readily accessible to-day, during White's time, if we may judge from the letter to his friend Thomas Pennant, it must have been attained with difficulty and even danger through the rocky hollow defiles, abounding in rare filices and echoes, but causing timid horsemen to shudder as they rode along them. Selborne is the result of an enthusiast's observations for a period of more than twoscore years; and probably in no one volume of equal size has such an amount of exact scrutiny been brought to bear, or been more lucidly presented. It offers no pretence to florid diction, nor does it seek to amuse for the sake of mere diversion. It has its plain story to relate; and this it does clearly, concisely, and instructively. Limpidity and simplicity are its grace; and one will recollect, as illustrative of this trait, the author's complaint of some of the old poets who laboured as much to introduce two chiming words as a butcher does to drag an ox to be slaughtered. His naturalness and absence of euphuism are only surpassed by his modesty when he adverts to his observations. No one, indeed, would have been more surprised at the great and increasing popularity of his work than the learned author himself, who died four years after its publication. It is true, so far as natural beauties are concerned, that his landscape contains no running brooks or purling streams, like Walton's. But couched amid quiet coverts and exquisite woodland scenery, it is equally serene and exempt from public haunt. And instead of the tuneful lapse of waters, he gives us, as romantic adjuncts, the springing curves of chalk-hills, the flickering shade of beechen groves, the placid repose of neighbouring meres which reflect the flight of his favourite hirundines, and the fresh dewy exhalations of his beloved ferny lanes. Those who wish for the bird's song and habits, largely independent of the emotions they excite, will find them most faithfully delineated in its pages; together with a most accurate account of the fauna of the district, and much relating to its history and phenomena. The author, a country vicar, was a man of simple tastes, the possessor of a rare investigating mind, and an intense. fondness for birds and animals. His observations, as is well known, are set forth in discursive form, as letters to his friends Thomas Pennant, Esq., and the Honourable Daines Barrington. Among the principal localities of his explorations referred to, are Wolmer Forest and Pond, Short and Long Lithe, Ayles Holt, Selborne Hanger and High Wood, the ruined foundations of the priory, his own garden, and the adjacent sheep-walks, downs, bogs, heaths, lanes, woodlands, and champaign-fields. The conciseness of his style and precision of touch are evident in his first letter, descriptive of the parish and its surroundings, a region, owing to the abrupt and uneven nature of the land, and its numerous woods and hills, that was especially frequented by birds. This one parish was his curriculum; by far the major portion of his studies having been pursued within its immediate confines and close to his own home. Qui ubique est, nunquam est, was his motto. In a day, from his windows and his garden, he could discern more of the ways of living creatures than befalls the lot of the ordinary person during a lifetime. "It is," he says, |