, no conflict, no strife, no bitterness, no insistent
voice; yet there was no sense of desolation, but rather the spectacle
of glad and simple lives of plants and birds in the free air, their
wildness tamed by the far-off and controlling hand of man, the calm
earth patiently serving his ends. I seemed to have passed out of
modern life into a quieter and older world, before men congregated into
cities, but lived the quiet and sequestered life of the country side;
and little by little there stole into my heart something of a dreamful
tranquillity, the calm of the slow brimming stream, the leisurely
herds, the growing grass. All seemed to be moving together, neither
lingering nor making haste, to some far-off end within the quiet mind
of God. Everything seemed to be waiting, musing, living the untroubled
life of nature, with no thought of death or care or sorrow. I passed a
trench of still water that ran as far as the eye could follow it across
the flat; it was full from end to end of the beautiful water violet,
the pale lilac flowers, with their faint ethereal scent, clustered on
the head of a cool emerald spike, with the rich foliage of the plant,
like fine green hair, filling the water. The rising of these beautiful
forms, by some secret consent, in their appointed place and time, out
of the fresh clear water, brought me a wistful sense of peace and
order, a desire for I hardly know what--a poised stateliness of life, a
tender beauty--if I could but win it for myself!

On and on, hour by hour, that still bright afternoon, I made my slow
way over the fen; insensibly and softly the far-off villages fell
behind; and yet I seemed to draw no nearer to the hills of the horizon.
Now and then I passed a lonely grange; once or twice I came near to a
tall shuttered engine-house of pale brick, and heard the slow beat of
the pumps within, like the pulse of a hidden heart, which drew the
marsh-water from a hundred runlets, and poured it slowly seawards.
Field after field slid past me, some golden from end to end with
buttercups, some waving with young wheat, till at last I reached a
solitary inn beside a ferry, with the quaint title: "_No hurry! five
miles from anywhere._" And here I met with a grave and kindly welcome,
such as warms the heart of one who goes on pilgrimage: as though I was
certainly expected, and as if the lord of the place had given charge
concerning me. It would indeed hardly have surprised me if I had been