narrow a space, into a belt of what
is, to the eye, only a few inches in depth, you get an incomparable
richness of colour. The solitary distant clumps of trees surrounding a
lonely farm gain a deep intensity of tint from the vast green level all
about them; and the line of the low far-off wolds, that close the view
many miles away, is of a peculiar delicacy and softness; the eye, too,
is provided with a foreground of which the elements are of the
simplest; a reedy pool enclosed by willows, the clustered buildings of
a farmstead; a grey church-tower peering out over churchyard elms; and
thus, instead of being checked by near objects, and hemmed in by the
limited landscape, the eye travels out across the plain with a sense of
freedom and grateful repose. Then, too, there is the huge perspective
of the sky; nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, the slow
march of clouds from horizon to horizon; it all gives a sense of
largeness and tranquillity such as you receive upon the sea, with the
additional advantage of having the solid earth beneath you, green and
fertile, instead of the steely waste of waters.

A day or two ago I found myself beside the lower waters of the Cam, in
flat pastures, full of ancient thorn-trees just bursting into bloom. I
gained the towing-path, which led me out gradually into the heart of
the fen; the river ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between its
high green flood-banks; the wide spaces between the embanked path and
the stream were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white
cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed. I stood long to listen to
the sharp song of the reed-warbler, slipping from spray to spray of a
willow-patch. Far to the north the great tower of Ely rose blue and
dim above the low lines of trees; in the centre of the pastures lay the
long brown line of the sedge-beds of Wicken Mere, almost the only
untouched tract of fenland; slow herds of cattle grazed, more and more
minute, in the unhedged pasture-land, and the solitary figure of a
labourer moving homeward on the top of the green dyke, seemed in the
long afternoon to draw no nearer. Here and there were the floodgates
of a lode, with the clear water slowly spilling itself over the rim of
the sluice, full of floating weed. There was something infinitely
reposeful in the solitude, the width of the landscape; there was no
sense of crowded life, no busy figures, intent on their small aims, to
cross one's path