Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/317

Rh century atmosphere one breathes in these letters, which cover a period roughly of thirty years, from 1760 to 1790—the time of wigs, cocked hats, short breeches and knee-buckles. While a famous divine made the world his parish, White made his parish his world. But for rare visits to Oxford, and at long intervals journeys into Sussex in a post-chaise, he passed his days at Selborne, type of those whose every care a few paternal acres bound, proto-type of the stay-at-home naturalist, who cares not to roam, because within a mile of home he can find enough of interest to fill a lifetime. What need of Alps with the South Downs at hand, of lakes when he had Frensham Pool? As the years ran on, everything upon which he set eyes surrounded him with the friendships of a lifetime, and each year eclipsed in interest the last, as he accumulated fresh material for his calendar of the seasons, and worked out in fuller detail the natural history of his loved parish. He was unmarried, and his only occupation appears to have been that of a curious enquirer into nature's ways and special reporter to the seasons,—a life of perfect leisure, yet never dull, how far apart from the strivings of this frenzied age, hermit-like in its aloofness from the stir of cities, remote as ruffs and farthingales, irrecoverable as the dodo. How the mellow-warmth of by-gone summers seems to cling to these pages—the memory of leisurely tea-drinkings on the lawn, prolonged till the nightjar droned from