ny more; but, as the wise
Psalmist said, be content to tarry the Lord's leisure. Yet, even when
I thought that I had the words by heart, they ceased like a sweet music
that comes to an end, and which the mind cannot recover.

I saw many other things that day, things beautiful and wonderful, no
doubt; but they had no voice for me, like the purple flower; or if they
had, the sea wind drowned them in the utterance, for their voices were
of the earth; but the flower's voice came, as I have said, from the
innermost heaven.

I like well to go on pilgrimage; and in spite of weariness and rainy
weather, and the stupid chatter of the men and women who congregate
like fowls in inn-parlours, I pile a little treasure of sights and
sounds in my guarded heart, memories of old buildings, spring woods,
secluded valleys. All these are things seen, impressions registered
and gratefully recorded. But my flower is somehow different from all
these; and I shall never again hear the name of the place mentioned, or
even see a map of that grey coast, without a quiet thrill of gladness
at the thought that there, spring by spring, blooms my little friend,
whose heart I read, who told me its secret; who will wait for me to
return, and indeed will be faithfully and eternally mine, whether I
return or no.

V

The Fens

I have lately become convinced--and I do not say it either
sophistically, to plead a bad cause with dexterity, or resignedly, to
make the best out of a poor business; but with a true and hearty
conviction--that the most beautiful country in England is the flat
fenland. I do not here mean moderately flat country, low sweeps of
land, like the heaving of a dying groundswell; that has a miniature
beauty, a stippled delicacy of its own, but it is not a fine quality of
charm. The country that I would praise is the rigidly and
mathematically flat country of Eastern England, lying but a few feet
above the sea, plains which were once the bottoms of huge and ancient
swamps.

In the first place, such country gives a wonderful sense of expanse and
space; from an eminence of a few feet you can see what in other parts
of England you have to climb a considerable hill to discern. I love to
feast my eyes on the interminable rich level plain, with its black and
crumbling soil; the long simple lines of dykes and water-courses carry
the eye peacefully out to a great distance; then, too, by having all
the landscape compressed into so