VIEW FROM BULBARROW 337 



potentillas and tormentillas and harebells, and little 

 eye-brights and shepherds' weather-glasses every- 

 where. 



The hills culminate, three miles away, in Bui- 

 barrow, 903 feet high above the sea, the chief 

 height in Dorset, and within a hundred feet of that 

 to which the chalk formation, Inkpen Beacon, for 

 instance, seems able to aspire. The view from it 

 is one of the finest in the south of England. It 

 embraces nearly the whole of Dorset, and con- 

 siderable stretches of Somerset and Wiltshire as 

 well, extending from Dunkerry Beacon, the Quan- 

 tocks, and the Mendips in one direction, to the Isle 

 of Portland and the Isle of Wight in the other. 

 Immediately below, spread out as in a map, lies the 

 rich and beautiful vale of Blackmoor, so well known 

 for its fences and its foxes ; and, prominent on the 

 near or distant horizons, are spots fraught with 

 interest of the most varied kind ; Badbury Rings, 

 connected, by its history, with Arthur, the most 

 famous of British, as is Alfred's Tower in another 

 direction with Alfred, the noblest of our English, 

 kings ; Hardy's monument, erected, not, as some 

 even of the more intelligent inhabitants, deliciously 

 oblivious of time and place, imagine, in honour of 



the Dorset novelist of to-day, but of Hardy of the 



Y 



