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Updated: June 3, 2025
In all the better parts of Hugh Miller's writings there is a remarkable style, extremely popular and unpretentious but never trivial or slipshod, which is not far below the best styles of the century for its special purpose, though in some respects it smacks more of the eighteenth, and has a certain relation with that of White of Selborne.
The debate lasted three days and on Clause IV, which enfranchised women, Lord Selborne made an extraordinarily powerful and eloquent speech in its favour. The House was filled and the excitement on both sides was intense.
The birds that nest in his syringas seem to be not his pensioners only, but his parishioners, so charmingly local, so intent upon his chronicle does he become when he is minded to play White of Selborne with a smile. And all the while it is the word that he is intent upon.
From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence.
And if any one would know how to study the natural history of a place, and how to write it, let him read and if he has read its delightful pages in youth, read once again that hitherto unrivalled little monograph, White's "Natural History of Selborne;" and let him then try, by the light of improved science, to do for any district where he may be stationed, what White did for Selborne nearly one hundred years ago.
The fact is, Wigan, I believe the gang know you are here, and think you are here on business. Plans will have been made accordingly, and it is therefore absolutely necessary that you should go on just as you have been doing. I don't think the hotel will be robbed now, but I am not sure. Sunshine or storm, go with Mrs. Selborne to-morrow.
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 was unfortunate that Thomas Bell, who was born eight months before the death of Gilbert White, and who, quite early in life began to entertain an enthusiastic reverence for that writer, did not find an opportunity of studying Selborne on the spot until the memories of White were becoming very vague and scattered there.
In fact, it is a text-book of natural history; and so complete have been his observations that he not only describes all the plants and animals, birds, rocks, soils, and buildings, but he also has space to devote to the cats of Selborne, and to tell how they prowl in the roadway and mount the tiled roofs to capture the chimney swallows.
How often, like another tortoise, has the mind come out of its winter to sun itself in the new warmth of a long-gone Selborne April? Did Gilbert White imagine he was bequeathing light to us? Of course not. He lived quietly in the obscure place where he was born, and did not try to improve or influence anybody. It seems he had no wish to be a great leader, or a great thinker, or a great orator.
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