But this question does not now concern us. The best of Selborne is the common on the hill--all the better for the steep hill which must be climbed to get to it, since that difficult way prevents the people from making too free use of it, and regarding it as a sort of back-yard or waste place to throw their rubbish on. It is a perpetual joy to the children. One morning in October I met there some youngsters gathering kindling-wood, and feasting at the same time on wild fruits--the sloes were just then at their best. They told me that they had only recently come to live in Selborne from Farringdon, their native village. "And which place do you like best?" I asked. "Selborne!" they shouted in a breath, and indeed appeared surprised that I had asked such a question. No wonder. This hill-top common is the { 183} most forest-like, the wildest in England, and the most beautiful as well, both in its trees and tangles of all kinds of wild plants that flourish in waste places, and in the prospects which one gets of the surrounding country. Here, seeing the happiness of the boys, I have wished to be a boy again. But one does not think so much of this spot when one comes to know the country round, and finds that Selborne Hill is but one of many hills of the same singular and beautiful type, sloping away gently on one side, and presenting a bold, almost precipitous front on the other, in most cases clothed on the steep side with dense beech woods. It is now eight years since I began to form an acquaintance with this east corner of Hampshire, but not until last October (1902) did I know how beautiful it was. From Selborne Hill one sees something of it; a better sight is obtained from Noire Hill, where one is able to get some idea of the peculiar character of the scenery. It is all wildly irregular, high and low grounds thrown together in a pretty confusion, and the soil everywhere fertile, so that the general effect is of extreme richness. One sees, too, that the human population is sparse, and that it has always been as it is now, and man's work--his old irregular fields, and the unkept hedges which, like the thickets on the waste places, are self-planted, and have been self-planted for centuries, and the old deep-winding lanes and by-roads--have come at last to seem one with nature's work. Out of this broken, variegated, richly green surface, here and there, in a sort of range, but { 184} irregular like all else, the hills, or hangers, lift their steep, bank-like fronts--splendid masses of red and russet gold against the soft grey-blue autumnal sky. It is delightful to walk through this bit of country from Nore Hill, and from hill to hill, across green fields, for the farms here are like wild lands that all are free to use, to Wheatham Hill, the highest point, which rises 800 feet above the sea-level. From this elevation one looks over a great part of that green variegated country of the Hangers, and sees on one hand where it fades close by into the sand and pine district beginning at Wolmer Forest, and on another side, beyond the little town of Petersfield, the region of great rolling downs stretching far away into Sussex.