"Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."

It is positive rest only to look into that garden of his. It is vastly
better than to

"See great Diocletian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade,"

for thither ambassadors intrude to bring with them the noises of
Rome, while here the world has no entrance. No rumor of the
revolt of the American Colonies seems to have reached him. "The
natural term of an hog's life" has more interest for him than that of
an empire. Burgoyne may surrender and welcome; of what
consequence is *that* compared with the fact that we can explain
the odd tumbling of rooks in the air by their turning over "to
scratch themselves with one claw"? All the couriers in Europe
spurring rowel-deep make no stir in Mr. White's little
Chartreuse;(1) but the arrival of the house-martin a day earlier or
later than last year is a piece of news worth sending express to all
his correspondents.

(1) *La Grande Chartreuse* was the original Carthusian monastery
in France, where the most austere privacy was maintained.

Another secret charm of this book is its inadvertent humor, so
much the more delicious because unsuspected by the author. How
pleasant is his innocent vanity in adding to the list of the British,
and still more of the Selbornian, *fauna!* I believe he would gladly
have consented to be eaten by a tiger or a crocodile, if by that