very age, not high, brick of a dozen harmonious
tones, with the accidents, corners, and breaches of perhaps seven
hundred years. Beyond, to the left, down the river, stood the masts in
the new docks that were built to preserve the trade of this difficult
port. Up-river, great new works of I know not what kind stood like a
bastion against the plain; and in between ran these oldest bits of Lynn,
somnolescent and refreshing--permanent.

The lanes up from the Ouse when I landed I found to be of a slow and
natural growth, with that slight bend to them that comes, I believe,
from the drying of fishing-nets. For it is said that courts of this
kind grew up in our sea-towns all round our eastern and the southern
coast in such a manner. It happened thus.

The town would begin upon the highest of the bank, for it was flatter
for building, drier and easier to defend than that part next to the
water. Down from the town to the shore the fishermen would lay out their
nets to dry. How nets look when they are so laid, their narrowness and
the curve they take, everybody knows. Then on the spaces between the
nets shanties would be built, or old boats turned upside down for
shelter, so that the curing of fish and the boiling of tar and the
serving and parcelling of ropes could be done under cover. Then as the
number of people grew, the squatters' land got value, and houses were
raised (you will find many small freeholds in such rows to this day),
but the lines of the net remained in the alley-ways between the houses.

All this I was once told by an old man who helped me to take my boat
down Breydon. He wore trousers of a brick red, and the stuff of them as
thick as boards, and had on also a very thick jersey and a cap of fur.
He was shaved upon his lips and chin, but all round the rest of his face
was a beard. He smoked a tiny pipe, quite black, and upon matters within
his own experience he was a great liar; but upon matters of tradition I
was willing to believe him.

Within the town, when I had gained it from that lane which has been the
ferry-lane, I suppose, since the ferry began, age and distinction were
everywhere.

Where else, thought I, in England could you say that nine years would
make no change? Whether, indeed, the Globe had that same wine of the
nineties I could not tell, for the hour was not congenial to wine; but
if it has some store of its Burgundy left from those days it must be
better still by now, for Burgundy wine t