nd rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part.

"Fludyer" was a poem to Sir Charles Fludyer on the devastation effected
on his marine villa at Felixstowe by the encroachments of the sea. The
answer to the enigma, Mrs. FitzGerald (Lucy Barton) told Canon Ainger,
was not money but an auctioneer's hammer.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Holcroft, dated December
5, 1828. Louisa Holcroft was a daughter of Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's
friend, whose widow married Kenney. A good letter with some excellent
nonsense about measles in it.]

LETTER 468

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

[December, 1828.]

My dear three C.'s--The way from Southgate to Colney Hatch thro' the
unfrequentedest Blackberry paths that ever concealed their coy bunches
from a truant Citizen, we have accidentally fallen upon--the giant Tree
by Cheshunt we have missed, but keep your chart to go by, unless you
will be our conduct--at present I am disabled from further flights than
just to skirt round Clay Hill, with a peep at the fine back woods, by
strained tendons, got by skipping a skipping-rope at 53--heu mihi non
sum qualis. But do you know, now you come to talk of walks, a ramble of
four hours or so--there and back--to the willow and lavender plantations
at the south corner of Northaw Church by a well dedicated to Saint
Claridge, with the clumps of finest moss rising hillock fashion, which I
counted to the number of two hundred and sixty, and are called
"Claridge's covers"--the tradition being that that saint entertained so
many angels or hermits there, upon occasion of blessing the waters? The
legends have set down the fruits spread upon that occasion, and in the
Black Book of St. Albans some are named which are not supposed to have
been introduced into this island till a century later. But waiving the
miracle, a sweeter spot is not in ten counties round; you are knee deep
in clover, that is to say, if you are not above a middling man's height;
from this paradise, making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of an
old convent at March Hall, where some of the painted glass is yet whole
and fresh.

If you do not know this, you do not know the capabilities of this
country, you may be said to be a stranger to Enfield. I found it out one
morning in October, and so delighted was I that I did not get home
before dark, well a-paid.

I shall long to show you the clump meadows, as they are called; we might
do that, without rea