If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me? The place where we must earn our bread?-- We who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of Liberty, Which we have taken carelessly From other hands. Nay, we shall dread, If we return, Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily The thing that men have died to free. Oh, English fields shall blossom red In all the blood that has been shed, By men whose guardians are we, If we return. F. W. HARVEY. Blandford, or, to give the town its full title, Blandford Forum, gets its name from the ancient ford of the Stour, on a bend of which river it is pleasingly placed in the midst of a bountiful district. It is called "Shottsford Forum" in Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and in _The Woodlanders_ we are told that "Shottsford is Shottsford still: you can't victual your carcass there unless you've got money, and you can't buy a cup of genuine there whether or no." The long chief street of the town has a bright, modern aspect, due to the great fire of 1731 which destroyed all but forty houses in the place. There is nothing to detain the pilgrim here, but it makes a good centre for any who are exploring the country around it. Five miles of rather hilly road brings us to Winterborne Whitchurch, which has a very interesting church containing a curious old font dated 1450 and a fine old pulpit removed from Milton. The grandfather of John and Charles Wesley was vicar here from 1658 to 1662. Of the poet George Turberville, born here about 1530, very little is known. He was one of the "wild" Turbervilles, and one would like to learn more about him. Anyway, here is a specimen of his verse: "Death is not so much to be feared as Daylie Diseases are. What? Ist not follie to dread and stand of Death in feare That mother is of quiet rest, and grief away does weare? Was never none that twist have felt of cruel Death the Knife; But other griefes and pining paines doe linger on thro life, And oftentimes one selfsame corse with furious fits molest When Death by one dispatch of life doth bring the soul to rest." When we arrive at Milborne St Andrews we are within eight miles of Dorchester. The Manor House, up a by-road and past the church of St Andrew, is the original of "Welland House" in Hardy's _Two on a Tower_. This was once the residence of the Mansell-Pleydell family, but since 1758 it has been used as a farm-house. The village was formerly an important posting-place between Blandford and Dorchester, and we are reminded of the coaching days by the effigy of a white hart on the cornice of the post office, in time past a busy inn.