out solitude presently, but meanwhile I will describe my hermitage.

The old Isle of Ely lies in the very centre of the Fens. It is a range
of low gravel hills, shaped roughly like a human hand. The river runs
at the wrist, and Ely stands just above it, at the base of the palm,
the fingers stretching out to the west. The fens themselves, vast peaty
plains, the bottoms of the old lagoons, made up of the accumulation of
centuries of rotting water-plants, stretch round it on every side; far
away you can see the low heights of Brandon, the Newmarket Downs, the
Gogmagogs behind Cambridge, the low wolds of Huntingdon. To the north
the interminable plain, through which the rivers welter and the great
levels run, stretches up to the Wash. So slight is the fall of the land
towards the sea, that the tide steals past me in the huge Hundred-foot
cut, and makes itself felt as far south as Earith Bridge, where the
Ouse comes leisurely down with its clear pools and reed-beds. At the
extremity of the southernmost of all the fingers of the Isle, a big
hamlet clusters round a great ancient church, whose blunt tower is
visible for miles above its grove of sycamores. More than twelve
centuries ago an old saint, whose name I think was Owen, though it
was Latinised by the monks into Ovinus, because he had the care of the
sheep, kept the flocks of St. Etheldreda, queen and abbess of Ely, on
these wolds. One does not know what were the visions of this rude and
ardent saint, as he paced the low heights day by day, looking over the
monstrous lakes. At night no doubt he heard the cries of the marsh-fowl
and saw the elfin lights stir on the reedy flats. Perhaps some touch of
fever kindled his visions; but he raised a tiny shrine here, and here he
laid his bones; and long after, when the monks grew rich, they raised
a great church here to the memory of the shepherd of the sheep, and
beneath it, I doubt not, he sleeps.

What is it I see from my low hills? It is an enchanted land for me, and
I lose myself in wondering how it is that no one, poet or artist, has
ever wholly found out the charm of these level plains, with their rich
black soil, their straight dykes, their great drift-roads, that run as
far as the eye can reach into the unvisited fen. In summer it is a feast
of the richest green from verge to verge; here a clump of trees stands
up, almost of the hue of indigo, surrounding a lonely shepherd's cote;
a distant church rises, a dark tower ove