he great
farm, with its picturesque outbuildings, and the range of woody hills
beyond. It is impossible not to pause a moment at that gate, the
landscape, always beautiful, is so suited to the season and the
hour,--so bright, and gay, and spring-like. But May, who has the chance
of another rabbit in her pretty head, has galloped forward to the
dingle, and poor May, who follows me so faithfully in all my wanderings,
has a right to a little indulgence in hers. So to the dingle we go.

At the end of the field, which when seen from the road seems terminated
by a thick dark coppice, we come suddenly to the edge of a ravine, on
one side fringed with a low growth of alder, birch, and willow, on
the other mossy, turfy, and bare, or only broken by bright tufts of
blossomed broom. One or two old pollards almost conceal the winding road
that leads down the descent, by the side of which a spring as bright as
crystal runs gurgling along. The dell itself is an irregular piece of
broken ground, in some parts very deep, intersected by two or three
high banks of equal irregularity, now abrupt and bare, and rocklike,
now crowned with tufts of the feathery willow or magnificent old thorns.
Everywhere the earth is covered by short, fine turf, mixed with mosses,
soft, beautiful, and various, and embossed with the speckled leaves and
lilac flowers of the arum, the paler blossoms of the common orchis, the
enamelled blue of the wild hyacinth, so splendid in this evening light,
and large tufts of oxslips and cowslips rising like nosegays from the
short turf.

The ground on the other side of the dell is much lower than the
field through which we came, so that it is mainly to the labyrinthine
intricacy of these high banks that it owes its singular character of
wildness and variety. Now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs, shut
out from all the world, with nothing visible but those verdant mounds
and the deep blue sky; now by some sudden turn we get a peep at an
adjoining meadow, where the sheep are lying, dappling its sloping
surface like the small clouds on the summer heaven. Poor harmless, quiet
creatures, how still they are! Some socially lying side by side; some
grouped in threes and fours; some quite apart. Ah! there are lambs
amongst them--pretty, pretty lambs--nestled in by their mothers. Soft,
quiet, sleepy things! Not all so quiet, though! There is a party of
these young lambs as wide awake as heart can desire; half a dozen of
them