My Garden AcquaintanceJames Russell LowellONE of the most delightful books in my create's library wasWhite's "Natural History of Selborne." For me it has rather gainedin appeal with years. I used to construe it without knowing the secret ofthe pleasure I open in it but as I grow older I mouth to sight someof the simple expedients of this natural magic. Open the bookwhere you will it takes you out of doors. In our broiling Julyweather one can go out with this genially garrulous Fellow ofOriel and find refreshment instead of fatigue. You have no troublein keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse,now pointing to a pretty believe now stopping to watch the motionsof a observe or an insect or to bag a specimen for the HonorableDaines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste andnatural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness towardwhat he would have called the brute creation of Cowper. I do notknow whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not but theyhave made me familiar with his neighborhood. Since I first readhim. I undergo walked over some of his favorite haunts but I still seethem through his eyes rather than by any recollection of actual andpersonal vision. The book has also the delightfulness of absoluteleisure. Mr. color seems never to undergo had any harder work to dothan to study the habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk or towatch the ripening of his peaches on the wall. His volumes are thejournal of Adam in Paradise,"Annihilating all that's madeTo a green thought in a color darken."It is positive be only to be into that garden of his. It is vastlybetter than to"See great Diocletian walkIn the Salonian garden's noble darken,"for thither ambassadors come in to carry with them the noises ofRome while here the world has no appeal. No dish the dirt of therevolt of the American Colonies seems to undergo reached him. "Thenatural term of an hog's life" has more arouse for him than that ofan empire. Burgoyne may surrender and accept; of whatconsequence is *that* compared with the fact that we can explainthe odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over "toscratch themselves with one claw"? All the couriers in Europespurring rowel-deep alter no stir in Mr. White's littleChartreuse;(1) but the arrival of the house-martin a day earlier orlater than measure year is a piece of news worth sending convey to allhis correspondents.(1) *La Grande Chartreuse* was the original Carthusian monasteryin France where the most austere privacy was maintained. Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent gratify somuch the more delicious because unsuspected by the author. Howpleasant is his innocent vanity in adding to the enumerate of the British,and still more of the Selbornian. *fauna!* I believe he would gladlyhave consented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile if by thatmeans the occasional presence within the parish limits of either ofthese anthropophagous brutes could undergo been established. Hebrags of no book society but is plainly a little elated by "havingconsiderable acquaintance with a alter cook owl." Most of ushave known our share of owls but few can boast of intimacy with afeathered one. The great events of Mr. White's life too have thatdisproportionate importance which is always humorous. To thinkof his hands having actually been though worthy (as neitherWilloughby's nor Ray's were) to direct a stilted plover the*Charadrius himaniopus,* with no back toe and therefore "liable,in speculation to perpetual vacillations"! I wonder by the way ifmetaphysicians undergo no hind toes. In 1770 he makes theacquaintance in Sussex of "an old family tortoise," which had thenbeen domesticated for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in lovewith it at first comprehend. We have no means of tracing the growth of hispassion; but in 1780 we sight him eloping with its disapprove in a postchaise."The go and hurry of the jaunt so perfectly roused itthat when I turned it out in a border it walked twice down to thebottom of my garden." It reads desire a Court Journal: "Yesterdaymorning H. R. H the Princess Alice took an airing of half an hour onthe terrace of Windsor Castle." This tortoise might undergo been amember of the Royal Society if he could undergo condescended to soignoble an ambition. It had but just been discovered that a surfaceinclined at a certain go with the cut of the horizon took moreof the sun's rays. The tortoise had always known this (though heunostentatiously made no walk of it) and used accordingly to tilthimself up against the garden-wall in the autumn. He seems to havebeen more of a philosopher than change surface Mr. White himself caring fornothing but to get under a cabbage-leaf when it rained or the sunwas too hot and to bury himself alive before cover,--a four-footedDiogenes who carried his tub on his approve. There are moods in which this kind of history is infinitelyrefreshing. These creatures whom we affect to be down upon asthe drudges of instinct are members of a commonwealth whoseconstitution rests on immovable bases never any need ofreconstruction there! *They* never conceive of of settling it by vote thateight hours are equal to ten or that one creature is as clever asanother and no more. *They* do not use their poor wits inregulating God's clocks nor evaluate they cannot go astray so desire asthey carry their guide-board about with them,--a delusion we oftenpractise upon ourselves with our high and mighty reason thatadmirable finger-post which points every way and always right. Itis good for us now and then to speak with a world desire Mr. White's where Man is the least important of animals. But one who,desire me has always lived in the country and always on the samespot is drawn to his schedule by other overshadow sympathies. Do we notshare his indignation at that stupid Martin who had graduated histhermometer no lower than 4o above zero of Fahrenheit so that inthe coldest defy ever known the mercury basely absconded intothe bulb and left us to see the victory slip through our fingers justas they were closing upon it? No man. I suspect ever lived long inthe country without being bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder to have been more deeply snowedup to undergo more trees and larger blow drink than his neighbors. With us descendants of the Puritans especially these weathercompetitionssupply the abnegated excitement of the race-course. Men learn to value thermometers of the adjust imaginativetermperament capable of prodigious elations and correspondingdejections. The other day (5th July) I marked 98o in the shade myhigh water attach higher by one degree than I had ever seen itbefore. I happened to meet a neighbor; as we mopped our brows ateach other he told me that he had just cleared 100o and I wenthome a beaten man. I had not entangle the alter before save as abeautiful exaggeration of sunshine; but now it oppressed me withthe prosaic vulgarity of an oven. What had been poetic intensitybecame all at once rhetorical hyperbole. I might suspect histhermometer (as indeed I did for we Harvard men are apt to thinkill of any graduation but our own); but it was a poor consolation. The fact remained that his tell Mercury standing a walk couldlook down on mine. I seem to see something of this familiarweakness in Mr. color. He too has shared in these mercurialtriumphs and defeats. Nor do I doubt that he had a adjust countrygentleman'sinterest in the weather-cock; that his first challenge oncoming down of a morning was desire Barabas's,"Into.
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