About This Book
Excerpt from My Study Windows
One of the most delightful books in my father's library was White's History of Selborne. For me it has rather gained in charm with years. I used to read it without knowing the secret of the pleasure I found in it, but as I grow older I begin to detect some of the simple expedients of this natural magic. Open the book where you will, it take you out of doors. In our broiling July weather one can walk out with his genially garrulous Fellow of Oriel and find refreshment instead of fatigue. You have no trouble in keeping abreast of him as he ambles along on his hobby-horse, now pointing to a pretty view, now stopping to watch the motions of a bird or an insect, or to bag a specimen for the Honourable Daines Barrington or Mr. Pennant. In simplicity of taste and natural refinement he reminds one of Walton; in tenderness toward what he would have called the brute creation, of Cowper. I do not know whether his descriptions of scenery are good or not, but they have made me familiar walked over some of his favorite haunts, but I still see them through his eyes rather than by any recollection of actual and personal vision. The book has also the delightfulness of absolute leisure. Mr. White seems never to have had any harder work to do than to study the habits of his any harder work to do than to study the habits of his feathered fellow-townsfolk, or to watch the ripening of his peaches on the wall.
Contains:
My garden acquaintance --
A good word for winter --
On a certain condescension in foreigners --
A great public character --
Carlyle --
Abraham Lincoln --
The life and letters of James Gates Percival --
Thoreau --
Swinburne's tragedies --
Chaucer --
Library of old authors --
Emerson the lecturer --
Pope.