(1733-1794), was the author of thirty-five pieces, almost entirely comic; of these The

first appeared in 1794. He was in favour of letting nature have her way, and of

THE TOPOGRAPHICAL WRITERS

375 refraining from all "improvement" of scenery. He lived to see himself congratulated by Sir Walter Scott on having "converted the age" to his opinions. Uvedale Price was also a translator and commentator of Pausanias, and the very type of an elegant country gentleman of the old school. William Gilpin (1724-1804) was a Cumberland clergyman engaged in teaching. He was in the habit of taking extended summer tours, and of noting what he saw with pen and pencil. He wrote as an enthusiast, and was one of the pioneers of picturesque descriptive writing. His volumes on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland (1789) undoubtedly prepared the way for the romantic school of poets. The publications of Gilpin were extremely numerous and varied in theme, but only those dedicated to picturesque travel could be said to survive him.

Gilbert White (17201793), the scion of a respectable clerical family, was the son of John White and his wife Anne Holt, and was born on the 18th of July 1720, at Selborne in Hants, of which parish his grandfather, Gilbert White, was vicar. He was educated under the poet, Thomas Warton the elder, at Basingstoke, and in 1739 proceeded to Oriel College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1743, and in 1744 was elected a Fellow. In 1747 White was admitted into holy orders by Bishop Secker. became curate to his uncle Charles White at Swarraton, and in 1751 to his grandfather's successor at Selborne itself. Gilbert White did not, however, finally settle in the village which he has made so illustrious until 1755. A plurality of sinecure college-livings were offered to him; he accepted only one, the vicarage of Moreton-Pinkney in Northamptonshire, which he held. from 1757 to his death. As soon as he had made his home at Selborne, he began to study its natural history, and to correspond with some of the most eminent scientists of the day, particularly with Banks, Daines Barrington, and Pennant; he greatly helped the last-mentioned in the composition of his once-famous British Zoology, although Pennant had not the grace to make any public acknowledgment of his debt. Barrington also used copious data supplied to him by Gilbert White, but always with adequate recognition. It was Barrington who, in 1770, first suggested to White that

Yota denique noftra illa afpera, & montuofa, & fidelis, & fimplex, & fautrix fuorum regio,
Cicero Orat. pro Cn. Plancio.

He

an

he should "draw up an account of the animals of the neighbourhood" of Selborne. But progress was slow. In 1774 White is still collecting in journals the materials for annus historico-naturalis; in 1780 he is arranging his notes; early in 1788 he is transcribing for the press. The celebrated work, so long preparing, was given at length to the public in 1789, as The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, and took its place at once as the most popular book of its class in English. White was now an elderly man, and the completion of his lifelong

View of Selborne Church

labour seems to have left him without any object for his energy. His kind, hospitable, and charitable career came to a noiseless end at Selborne on the 26th of June 1793. He would never sit for his portrait, but we are told that he was a little, spare man, of a remarkably upright carriage.

FROM "THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE."

The evening proceedings and manoeuvres of the rooks are curious and amusing in the autumn. Just before dusk they return in long strings from the foraging of the day, and

rendezvous by thousands over Selborne down, where they wheel round in the air and sport and dive in a playful manner, all the while exerting their voices, and making a loud cawing, which, being blended and softened by the distance that we at the village are below them,

WHITE

377 becomes a confused noise or chiding; or rather a pleasing murmur, very engaging to the imagination, and not unlike the cry of a pack of hounds in hollow, echoing woods, or the rushing of the wind in tall trees, or the tumbling of the tide upon a pebbly shore. When this ceremony is over, with the last gleam of day, they retire for the night to the deep beechen woods of Tisted and Ropley. We remember a little girl who, as she was going to bed, used to remark on such an occurrence, in the true spirit of physico-theology, that the rooks were saying their prayers; and yet this child was much too young to be aware that the Scriptures have said of the Deity-that "He feedeth the ravens who call upon Him."

WHITE OWLS.

We have had ever since I can remember, a pair of white owls that constantly breed under the eaves of this church. As I have paid good attention to the manner of life of

A Page from the "Naturalist's Journal," with Autograph Notes by Gilbert White

these birds during their season of breeding, which lasts the summer through, the following remarks may not perhaps be unacceptable :-About an hour before sunset (for then the mice begin to run) they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all round the hedges of meadows and small enclosures for them, which seem to be their only food. In this irregular country we can stand on an eminence and see them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and often drop in the grass or corn. I have minuted these birds with my watch for an hour together, and have found that they return to their nest, the one or other of them, about once in five minutes; reflecting at the same time on the adroitness that every animal is possessed of as far as regards the well-being of itself and offspring. But a piece of address, which they show when they return loaded, should not, I think, be passed over in silence.-As they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their claws to their nest; but, as the feet are necessary in their ascent under the tiles, they

constantly perch first on the roof of the chancel, and shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that their feet may be at liberty to take hold of the plate on the wall as they are rising under the eaves.

White owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at all; all that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood kinds. The white owl does, indeed, snore and hiss in a tremendous manner; and these menaces well answer the intention of intimidating; for I have known a whole village up in arms on such an occasion, imagining the churchyard to be full of goblins and spectres. White owls also often scream horribly as they fly along; from this screaming probably arose the common people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon a nimble and watchful quarry.

While I am talking of owls, it may not be improper to mention what I was told by a gentleman of the county of Wilts. As they were grubbing a vast hollow pollard-ash that had been the mansion of owls for centuries, he discovered at the bottom a mass of matter that at first he could not account for. After some examination he found that it was a congeries of the bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) that had been heaping together for ages, being cast up in pellets out of the crops of many generations of inhabitants. For owls cast up the bones, fur, and feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks. He believes, he told me, that there were bushels of this kind of substance.

The art-criticism of the eighteenth century, which was in the main both pedantic and empirical, culminated in England in the Discourses of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, in which a very great painter translated into the old professional formulas genuine impressions of beauty and a broad practical experience of æsthetics. Before his time persons who might or might not have ever seen a picture painted theorised about the principles of art in a vacuum; Reynolds was a superb painter first, and then a lecturer on the technique of the profession he practised. As a writer he has been accused of lacking animation and lucidity, and this is partly or occasionally true. But he has the ease of a man who knows what he is talking about, and a suavity and fulness characteristic of his charming social presence. His Discourses, which were listened to by all that was promising in the younger generation of painters and sculptors from Flaxman to Turner, exercised an immense influence on taste, and may still be read with instruction and pleasure.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was the son of a clergyman and schoolmaster at Plympton East, in South Devon, where he was born on the 16th of July 1723. He was educated at his father's grammar-school, with a view to his becoming a doctor, but his bias towards design was irresistible. In 1741 he was placed under Hudson, the portrait painter, with whom he worked for two years. In 1744 Reynolds started, first in London, then in Plymouth, painting cheap portraits for a livelihood. At the close of 1749 he sailed for Italy, where he remained until 1752, when he settled in London for the remainder of his life. Of the magnificent career of Reynolds as an artist this is not the place to speak. His intellectual life was greatly stimulated by his friendship with Johnson, which dated from about 1754; ten years later the lexicographer wrote to the painter, "If I should lose you, I should lose almost the only man whom I call