tly
white against a thunder-laden sky. Grand and pathetic at once, for it
stands for something that we have parted with. What was the outward and
stately form of a mighty idea, a rich system, is now little more than an
aesthetic symbol. It has lost heart, somehow, and its significance
only exists for ecclesiastically or artistically minded persons; it
represents a force no longer in the front of the battle.

One other fine feature of the countryside there is, of which one never
grows tired. If one crosses over to Sutton, with its huge church, the
tower crowned with a noble octagon, and the village pleasantly perched
along a steep ridge of orchards, one can drop down to the west, past a
beautiful old farmhouse called Berristead, with an ancient chapel, built
into the homestead, among fine elms. The road leads out upon the fen,
and here run two great Levels, as straight as a line for many miles, up
which the tide pulsates day by day; between them lies a wide tract of
pasture called the Wash, which in summer is a vast grazing-ground for
herds, in rainy weather a waste of waters, like a great estuary--north
and south it runs, crossed by a few roads or black-timbered bridges, the
fen-water pouring down to the sea. It is a great place for birds this.
The other day I disturbed a brood of redshanks here, the parent birds
flying round and round, piping mournfully, almost within reach of my
hand. A little further down, not many months ago, there was observed a
great commotion in the stream, as of some big beast swimming slowly; the
level was netted, and they hauled out a great sturgeon, who had somehow
lost his way, and was trying to find a spawning-ground. There is an
ancient custom that all sturgeon, netted in English waters, belong by
right to the sovereign; but no claim was advanced in this case. The line
between Ely and March crosses the level, further north, and the huge
freight-trains go smoking and clanking over the fen all day. I often
walk along the grassy flood-bank for a mile or two, to the tiny decayed
village of Mepal, with a little ancient church, where an old courtier
lies, an Englishman, but with property near Lisbon, who was a
gentleman-in-waiting to James II. in his French exile, retired
invalided, and spent the rest of his days "between Portugal and Byall
Fen"--an odd pair of localities to be so conjoined!

And what of the life that it is possible to live in my sequestered
grange? I suppose there is not a qui