And all the country visible from this point is broken up into round hills, and each field is a collection of smaller hills, shaped like waves of a storm-tossed ocean.
How still and quiet it is! And above the green of fields and woods is a blue, blue sunny sky. Larks are singing up yonder, their songs mingling sweetly with the chiming of the church bells that comes floating over the hills, rising and falling as the breeze does, now high and clear, now soft and far-away like.
I had the caravan half-filled this morning with bright-eyed, wondering children. A parent brought me a red cotton handkerchief.
“T’missus,” he explained, “was makin’ oop a pie, and I thought upon thee loike.”
It was kindly, and I couldn’t refuse the gift, though gooseberry pies form no part of the Wanderer’s menu.
Ten o’clock pm.—The full moon has just risen over the dark oak woods; a strangely white dense fog has filled all the hollows—a fog you can almost stretch out your hands and touch. The knolls in the fields all appear over it, looking like little islands in the midst of an inland sea.
The corncrake is sounding his rattle in the hayfields—a veritable voice of the night is he—and not another sound is to be heard.
Passed a garden a few minutes ago while walking out. Such a sight! Glowworms in thousands; far more lovely than fireflies in an Indian jungle.
To bed.
June 29th.—We got under way by 8:30, after a brief visit to the Coleorton Pottery. This place has an ugly enough appearance outside, but is very interesting internally. The proprietor kindly showed my coachman and me over the works. We saw the great heaps of blue clay that had been dug from the hillside and left exposed for weeks to the weather, the tanks in which it is mixed with water, the machinery for washing and sifting it, the clay being finally boiled to the consistency of putty. An old man took dabs of this putty and cast them on a revolving table, smiling as he did so as he watched our wondering looks, for lo! cups and saucers and teapots seemed to grow up under his fingers, and a whole tea-set was produced more quickly than one could have brewed a cup of tea.