treatises have sunk beneath the waves upon which this cockleshell of a book rides so safely and buoyantly!' What is the secret of its longevity-of Selborne's perennial charm? It is not, as will have been seen, to be found in the purely literary qualities of the book, but to the fact that in White (as in most of the men whom clubs and societies of a later day commemorate) were implicit the tastes and passions of an era or eras succeeding his own. In venerating his work a later generation, amid influences tending to centralization and aggregation, pays homage to love of locality in parish and hundred and of simple country life, to sympathy for all kinds of animals, and to enthusiasm for observing birds and plants, and preserving all manner of old fashions and folk-lore. Such preoccupations as these-exceedingly rare, as rare almost as a love for mountaineering-in Gilbert White's day are cherished more and more in our own, as each year additional thousands are immured in interminable streets; and to the numerous folk whom the conditions of constant city life oppress The Natural History of Selborne, as the years roll on, becomes more and more of a classic.

These are some of the merits and other reasons for the remarkable and ever-growing vitality of White's book; but its endearing charm lies deeper in the sweet and kindly personality of the author, who on his rambles gathers no spoil, but watches the birds and field-mice without disturbing them from their nests, and in the spirit of the Man of Ross (Kyrle), quietly plants an acorn where he thinks an oak is wanted or sows beech-nuts in what is now a stately row.

Gilbert White is simply one observer, who, by reason of an unaffected literary style and a great talent for sympathetic interpretation of nature, is singled out by lovers of literature to represent a small but rapidly increasing band of workers in the field of natural history. Their work

possesses great interest, but an interest rather evolutionary than literary, and appealing rather to the historian of science than the historian of letters. Such work, as it progresses from the statement of first principles, and addresses itself more and more to experts upon selected matters of detail, must simultaneously recede from the fairer region of Belles-Lettres. It is perhaps enough, therefore, in this connection, merely to mention the wellknown studies of Erasmus Darwin and of Priestley.

Less well known, though of primary interest as heralding new chains of investigation, are such treatises as the Essays and Observations (1756) of Joseph Black (17281799), the Nestor of the chemistry of the eighteenth century'; the Experiments on Air (1783) of Henry Cavendish (1731-1810); the Theory of Rain and Theory of the Earth (1784-5) of James Hutton (1726-1797), one of the founders of modern geology; or the Meteorological Essays (1793) of John Dalton (1766-1844), the mathematician and chemist.

A new constellation is formed by the explorers of the dark continent, among whom is conpicuous James Bruce (1730-1794), known by his Travels to Discover the Sources of the Nile, between 1768 and 1772, published at Edinburgh in 1788. Its appearance gave rise to a storm of sceptical squibs and pamphlets, though many subsequent travellers, notably Léon Delaborde, have confirmed the general veracity and even exactitude of Bruce's descriptions, lacking though they very often are in scientific form. The great Mungo Park (1771-1806) commenced his astounding journey up the Niger at the close of 1795, but his Travels, first issued in 1798-9, barely come within our limits.

A good deal more important than these they could scarcely be more interesting-are the famous Travels of Arthur Young. The 'Suffolk farmer,' as Young termed himself, was born in London on September 11th, 1741,

and showed early predilections for experimental farming and an intuitive gift for agricultural journalizing. His farming was nearly always conducted at a disastrous loss, but whenever he put pen to paper-and he was a prolific writer-he was successful. He had, together with an acute power of observation, a happy gift of selecting materials to interest his readers, and of giving a friendly and familiar turn to the most instructive parts of his narrative. The best known of his writings are the Tour in Ireland, 1780, and the more celebrated Travels during 1787, 1788, 1789, and 1790, undertaken with a view of ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France (1792-4). Apart from the excellence of his diarizing style and the pleasant candour of the writer, and apart also from the historical interest of a survey of France when upon the very eve of the great revolution, the wisdom of the economic dicta and of the comparisons instituted between French and English manners and customs (a topic since rendered so fruitful by Taine and Hamerton, Betham-Edwards and Bodley) give the book a permanent value and render it one of the most delightful of all books of reference.

Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), the descendant of an old Welsh family, had his interest excited in natural history by reading Willughby's Ornithology while at Oxford, and in 1761 began his laborious British Zoology. He is best remembered by his antiquarian tours, notably his Tour in Scotland (1772), and his Tour in Wales (1778), and his very popular Account of London (1790). Yet his Zoology,' and especially his History of Quadrupeds, is of some importance as a pioneer effort at a systematic description of the mammalia based upon the classification of John Ray, for whom Pennant had a just and enthusiastic admiration.

1 First published, 1766; revised edition, 1768-70.

From eminent travellers and tourists we come to the compilers of travels, among whom there are several considerable names. The General Collection of Voyages and Travels executed by John Pinkerton (1758-1826) in seventeen volumes is still held in esteem, and entitles its compiler to be called an eighteenth century Hakluyt. The Voyages of Discovery in the Southern Hemisphere, drawn up by John Hawkesworth in 1773, excited an extraordinary amount of strange criticism at the time of its appearance, but is, nevertheless, a composition drawn up with some literary skill to illustrate not unimportant transactions.1

1 It would be a manifest omission to pass by the topography of the period without reference to a class of literary and learned compilations of which the later eighteenth century has supplied a lion's share of the most splendid examples and models-to wit, County Histories. Among those published within our limits

were:

Daniel Lysons's Environs of London (1792-6).

Nicolson's and Hutchinson's Cumberland (1777 and 1794).

John Hutchins's Dorset (1774).

P. Morant's Essex (1768).

Edward Hasted's Kent (1778-99).

John Nichols's Leicestershire (1790-1815).

Francis Blomefield's Norfolk (1781).

John Bridges' Northamptonshire, as remodelled by P. Whalley (1791).

John Collinson's Somerset (1791).

Nicolson and Burn's Westmorland (1777).

T. R. Nash's Worcestershire (1781-99).

To most of these books belongs the rare quality of maintaining their original price, while some have more than maintained it. To them should be added the Munimenta Antiqua of Edward King (1735-1807), containing plans of ancient British castles, a veritable storehouse of archæological lore; and the monograph by Robert Adam (1728-1792) upon Diocletian's Palace at Spalato, published in 1764, and highly commended by Gibbon.

Samuel Parr (1747-1825).

III. Classical Scholars and Humanists.

In the van of the scholars of Johnson's day, after admitting the general superiority of Warburton and Horsley, and possibly of Johnson himself and the Wartons, a contemporary would probably have set the claims of 'the famous Dr. Parr,' a pedagogue whose celebrity in his day was at least equal to that of Arnold, of Thring, or of Jowett. As a scholar Parr was certainly brilliant, but he consumed his power in gladiatorial displays, and has left no adequate monument of his powers. De Quincey has written a deliciously ironical survey of Parr's Opera Omnia, and several passages in it are specially interesting because so much in them might be applied to Dr. Johnson himself. The fame of Parr as an author is shown to be largely a delusion, resting partly upon his fame as a schoolmaster and partly upon that of an active Whig in politics; it is true that his fluttering pamphlets make up in the aggregate a dense block of printed matter, yet the literary product is scarcely more digestible than 'a geological boulder.' Johnson's own literary position was based to a certain extent upon books that he ought to have written. Parr's pretensions were almost wholly of this kind.

His admirers were anxious to set up Parr as in some sort a rival to Johnson as colloquial dictator, but, says De Quincey, his fulminations were scarcely more than Drury Lane counterfeits of the true Jovian thunderbolts. In indolence alone can he be said to have approached the sage of Bolt Court. Johnson's dictatorship was at least based upon some genuine critical aptitude. Parr's, upon analysis, turns out to be little more than effrontery, and