Immediately above the town rises a lofty eminence, popularly called the _Giant's Hill_, from an uncouth colossal figure cut on its chalky surface. It represents a man, 180 feet in height, holding in his right hand a club and stretching forth the other. "Vulgar tradition," says Britton, "makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor, and laid himself to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down, like another Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants, who immediately traced his dimensions for the information of posterity." On the summit of the hill is an entrenchment called _Trendle_ (_i.e._ a circle, Saxon). The Cerne giant is believed by some authorities to be of Phoenician origin and to represent Baal, but no one really knows much about him, and, it must be also added, the Dorset rustic cares very little about the matter. CHAPTER VI A LITERARY NOTE: THOMAS HARDY AND WILLIAM BARNES Thomas Hardy is a Dorset man both by birth and residence. He was born on 2nd June 1840, in a pretty, thatched cottage in the hamlet of Higher Bockhampton. If one takes the London road out of Dorchester, a walk of a mile and a turn to the right will lead to the village of Stinsford; passing this hamlet and keeping to the road which crosses Kingston Park, a turn to the left breaks on to Higher Bockhampton. The house stands on the edge of Thorncombe Wood, skirting Bockhampton Heath, but Hardy has told us that within the last fifty years the wood enclosed the house on every side.