CARAVANNING.

WE left Lulworth at 9.15 on Friday morning, April 16th. The caravan, in charge of Stanley Ford, arrived the night before, travelling by road, and the two horses, 'Blackbird' and ' Patsy,' were comfortably stabled at the Cove Inn. The village was interested in the caravan, but every one was well-mannered; there was no great amount of staring and " around-huddling," as I have seen. It was April weather ; a bright sun and a chastening wind. The clouds would drift over the sun, and just as oue began to feel chilled they would blow over, and a great wealth of sunshine be poured over the land. The woods were then still bronzed and ruddy; only the horse-chestnut was out of his glistening buds, the young leaves hanging limp and languid from his boughs, with all the creases of their late close-packing showing en their light green.

Lulworth is a pretty place, and it has my blessing. England site so high in her surrounding seas that a small sheltered harbour such as this has unexpected meaning, like an open door in a fastness. I sat on the tilt of the cart, and Clare walked by the rein of the leader. She was in a blue overall, with a brown leather belt, and a red pocket-handkerchief tied over her head, and her hair twy-plaited. Christopher wore a woodsmoke-blue jersey, and looked like Hain Peggotty. Bimbo carried a sparrow gun, with a bandolier filled with cartridges, aud David wore a green jersey and a green felt bat like an Irish pig-driver's. The sense of exhilaration, the spirit of jaunt, was with us, and there was much. singing and quipping. It is a great point to be astir and out in the world while the wine of the morning is still in the day.

We passed sheep driven by a man on a rough pony, his weather-worn corduroys the colour of his flock. Why do the Clothes of field labourers always suit their setting ? It is because they are allowed to grow old and fade aud are generally of unobtrusive colours, so they tone with their surrouudinge, like the stones and lichens, having none of the impertinence of newer clothes.

April is Chaucer's month, and it is time that one should read again " The Flours and the Leafe " :— " This pleasant tale is like a little copse,

The honied lines so freshly interlace, To keep the reader in so sweet a place, So that he, here and there, full hearted stops ; And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops Fall, cool and suddenly, against his face,

And by the wandering melody may trace

Which way the tender-legged linnet hops. 0 1 what a power hath white simplicity ! What magic power has this gentle story I I, that do ever feel athirst for glory, Could at this moment be content to lie Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings Were hoard of none beside the mournful robins."

Many were the little copses we passed that day, slender hazel

copses that, because of their very lightness, were "caught and ouff'd by the wind." And larger copses- " In which were oakes great, straight as a lino, Under the which the grasso, so fresh of hewn, Was newly sprung ; and an eight-foot or nine, Every tree wel fro his fellow grows,

With branches broad, laden with leaves now% That sprongen out against the sonne ahem Some very red, and some a glad light grene."

It was the odious necessity of one of us to have to catch a

train at Dorchester, towards which town we were making our way, so my watch bad continually to be consulted, and all the noble leisure of the caravan was turned to tardiness and an ineffectual sense of speed:—

" But who would hawk at eagles with a dove P" The mistake lay in trying to catch a train with a caravan.

We arrived at Dorchester, and I thought of Barnes, and prayed that his soul might know groat peace. I heard his lines saying themselves in my memory :-

"Come out of doors ! 'tis Spring! 'tis May

The trees be green, the fields be gay, The weather warm, the winter blast With all his train of ()lends is past.

The sun do rise while folk do sleep To take a higher daily sweep, With cloudless face a-flinging down His sparkling light upon the growl'.

Mother of blossoms! and of all That's fair afield from Spring to Fall, The cuckoo, over white-waved seas Do come to sing in thy green trees, And butterflies, in giddy flight, Do gleam the most by thy gay light.

0, when at last my fleshly eyes Shall shut upon the fields and skies, May Summer's sunny days be gone, And Winter's clouds be coming on. Nor may I draw upon the earth Of thy sweet air, my latest breath, Alassen I mid want to stay

Behind for thee, 0 flowery May I"

I took the three children to the nearest inn and there ordered dinner for them ; but we were tired and hungry by that time, and the woof of the day had a rent in it because of that train. After we had rested we went to see Maiden Castle, a magnificent earthwork close to Dorchester. It rises high out of the wide Down, a olean, desolate, wind-swept spot. Only on this day all the ground was gold-dusted with daisies, and the wind was warm and rounded,—one of those winds that push you about rather than chill you. The larks were singing. If you sat to listen to them, as we did, they seemed to make a curtain of sound. I thought of them as they plied the air, as little shuttles going up and down, bearing each its thread of song. We found some beautiful snail-shells, pink and softly saffron, and mottled, various and astonishingly perfect. I am glad George Herbert thought of saying about God :-- " Thou art in small things great, Not small iu any."

Next day our road lay to Blandford ; but now a sense of leisure made all well. The wheels went round at the right pace, and each stone ou the road was of interest and not a hindrance, the weather all the time making one sing a Benedi- tits in one's heart. We had our lunch in a gorse dingle that might have come straight from the pages of Borrow ; the whole spirit of the place put you iu mind of Armenian verbs. Hero blackcaps were singing, no doubt about the security of their nests ; and so high and thick was the covert that you saw nothing but sky when you were sitting,—blue sky, bitten out by the ragged outline of the blossoming gorse.

We reached Blandford at six o'clock and stayed at the Crown Inn. This is a Queen Anne private house, which has been turned into an inn, retaining all its old dignity and comfort. There was a sense of square solidity in its well- proportioned rooms. That evening we had tea. sitting round a large square table, and here the teapot alone gave an air of plenty to the beard. It reminded one of the fashions in old photographs, and wore Britannia-metal flounce and furbelow. After tea I put the children to bed. David shared my room. I like looking at his small, dark-haired bead on the adjoining pillow. In the morning I am wakened by a baud, light as a leaf, stroking my hair, and a penetrating whisper : " Mother, why has Jupiter got eight moons P " or perhaps a more startling opening to conversation, "I suppose we are just dead pieces of flesh, till our soul works us P" On the following day our road lay from Blandford to Shaftesbury, a road here and there cut through chalk dowus. The high ridges were set dark with great yew-trees. There were brakes of yellow gorse-blossoms, and little birch-trees were standing against the darker background, pale flames of living green :—

" All ye green things of the earth,

Praise the Lord who gave you birth, And for ever magnify."

We passed fine old stone houses, set hack in their pretty

parks, each with its little grey church snugged close to it, and near by the lichen-roofed farm. Cottages, too, like broody hens, their very•ahape suggesting shelter; and the bare hedges round about them were white with thorn. We lunched on this day in a field, not so well found a spot as the gorse dingle. Often, caravanning, one Says : " Hero is the very place to rest "; but the van sways on down the road, and second thoughts prompt one to say : "Further on we shall be even better pleased." And so, as in the story of the Sibylline books, one rejects what one might take ultimately, realising a lesser good. Asking permission of the farmer whose field it was, we drew the van in ; the village children clustered round its gay panels. Then Bimbo went to buy butter for frying, and Christopher bought milk and cheese.

Wo reached Shaftesbury about four o'clock, and here we lost Christopher. We stopped the van and waited, and before long we saw him in the distance, very loose-limbed and easygoing, looking as if his arms might drop off if he took his hands out of his pockets. He was tired—it had been a long day for nine years old—so he climbed into the van and lay at full length on the tilt of the cart, and lay there, as Mrs. Carlyle described a sleeping man under a tree in the Park, looking "as if he had been poured out of a jug" :- " The gypsies stood at the Castle gate And wow 1 but they sang sweetly. The lady cam tripping down the stair They sang so varra completely.

And while she geed adoun the stair Wi' all her maids about her,

The gypsies stood at the open door And cuist the glamour o'er her.

' Last night I lay in a silken hod, My nun guid lord beside me ; To-night ril lie in a windy barn, Whatever the world betide me.'"

So sings the " Earl's lady" in the gypsy ballad of " Johnny Faa." And when the caravanner returns home this ballad may be appreciated.

Who is it who has written: "Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes" P Yes.

Our next day's caravanning was from Shaftesbury to Amesbury. We stopped at Hindon and bought our dinner there, and Clare said: " How interesting it is in a butcher's shop."

We lunched by Great Ridge Wood. Here the violets broke from the ground in broad washes of colour ; they ran up into the wood, still bare of leaves, in creeks and inlets of purple ; they grew in bosses and mats, painting the ground. And here anemones grew, and primroses in memorable beauty. Yet one nearly forgets each year how perfect the spring can be.

We walked a great deal, stopping at Wylye. For five years I lived near Wylye and knew it well, and it has seemed to me at times, in familiar spots, that not only the appearance of a place is well known to one, but the very air seems recog- nisable. Then we had a mug-tea at Winterbourne Stoke beside a clearly running stream, with green pastures round vs, and waters still enough to hold unbroken image of the skies " But where the floods did lately drown

There at the evening stake me down.

For now the waves are fallen and dried, And now the meadows fresher dyed Whepe grass, with moisture colour dashed, Semi as green silks but newly washed.

No serpent now, nor crocodile

Remains behind our little Nile, Unless itself you will mistake

Among these meads the only snake.

See in what wanton harmless folds It everywhere the meadow holds,

Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt It they be in it, or without."

Best of all were the last two miles on the grass-track, the sound of the wheels muffled in the close turf. When the caravan started we heard some new little noises that we bad never noticed before, lost as they had been in the gritting of the wheels: a gentle flap of some hanging cord, or an easy lean and lurch of the whole concern that made a comfortable creaking, like the sound of oars in the rowlocks on a calm bay,--a sound that gives, in a sense, a murmur to the caravan, as if it talked to you.

Each juniper-bush now had its shadow, for by this time the sun was low. These shadows lay dark and sharply defined against the tawny yellow of the Down. Great tan-coloured hares came leaping, so snared by curiosity as to sit for quite a long moment turning a largo eye sideways upon us. The plovers wheeled on their rounded wings; there was no breath of wind to disturb the perfection of the evening.

Again I carried in my mind, as I did the last time I caravanned, the image of

"Winding ways, on wand'ring wide Or wilder waste, or wind-blown wood."

Stored was my mind with the thoughts of green fields, and bud-sheaths falling softly

"By dipping Downs at dawn of day,

Or dewy dells, when daylight dies."

This is the time of year to be out all day, and to be in the country.

Nevertheless, daily routine clamps us. Few people are strong enough, or even willing, to go right away for a long time from the cares that concern them. It is the small facts of home-life that pin and hamper. Gulliver, with all his strength, was bound by the hairs of the Liliputs.

So home we came in lumbering leisure.

PAMELA TENNANT.