n which
leads close to my house; owing to the house having stood for some time
unoccupied, people had tended to use it as a short cut. The kindly
farmer obviated this by putting up a little notice-board, to indicate
that the path was private. A day or two afterwards it was removed and
thrown into a ditch. I was perturbed as well as surprised by this,
supposing that it showed that the notice had offended some local
susceptibility; and being very anxious to begin my tenure on neighbourly
terms, I consulted my genial landlord, who laughed, and said that there
was no one who would think of doing such a thing; and to reassure me he
added that one of his men had seen the culprit at work, and that it was
only an old horse, who had rubbed himself against the post till he had
thrown it down.

The days pass, then, in a delightful monotony; one reads, writes, sits
or paces in the garden, scours the country on still sunny afternoons.
There are many grand churches and houses within a reasonable distance,
such as the great churches near Wisbech and Lynn--West Walton, Walpole
St. Peter, Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of others--great
cruciform structures, in every conceivable style, with fine woodwork and
noble towers, each standing in the centre of a tiny rustic hamlet,
built with no idea of prudent proportion to the needs of the places they
serve, but out of pure joy and pride. There are houses like Beaupre,
a pile of fantastic brick, haunted by innumerable phantoms, with its
stately orchard closes, or the exquisite gables of Snore Hall, of rich
Tudor brickwork, with fine panelling within. There is no lack of
shrines for pilgrimage--then, too, it is not difficult to persuade some
like-minded friend to share one's solitude. And so the quiet hours
tick themselves away in an almost monastic calm, while one's book grows
insensibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on the edge of the dyke.

I do not say that it would be a life to live for the whole of a year,
and year by year. There is no stir, no eagerness, no brisk interchange
of thought about it. But for one who spends six months in a busy and
peopled place, full of duties and discussions and conflicting interests,
it is like a green pasture and waters of comfort. The danger of it, if
prolonged, would be that things would grow languid, listless, fragrant
like the Lotos-eaters' Isle; small things would assume undue importance,
small decisions would seem unduly momentous; o