When beginning its recess from the summer tropic, it
would continue more and more to be hidden every night, till at
length it would descend quite behind the object again; and so
nightly more and more to the westward.
Letter XLV
To The Honourable Daines Barrington
Selborne.
... Mugire videbis
Sub pedibus terram, et descendere montibus ornos.
When I was a boy I used to read, with astonishment and implicit
assent, accounts in Baker's Chronicle of walking hills and
travelling mountains. John Philips, in his Cyder, alludes to the
credit that was given to such stories with a delicate but quaint vein
of humour peculiar to the author of the Splendid Shilling.
I nor advise, nor reprehend the choice
Of Marcley Hill: the apple no where finds
A kinder mould: yet 'tis unsafe to trust
Deceitful ground: who knows but that once more
This mount may journey, and his present site
Forsaken, to thy neighbour's bounds transfer
Thy goodly plants, affording matter strange
For law debates!
But, when I came to consider better, I began to suspect that though
our hills may never have journeyed that far, yet the ends of many of
them have slipped and fallen away at distant periods, leaving the
cliffs bare and abrupt.
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