There is one little corner of England; here is another.

The Isle of Ely lying on the fens is like a starfish lying on a flat shore at low tide.  Southward, westward, and northward from the head or centre of the clump (which is where the Cathedral stands) it throws out arms every way, and these arms have each short tentacles of their own.  In between the spurs runs the even fen like a calm sea, and on the crest of the spurs, radiating also from Ely, run the roads.  Long ago there was but one road of these that linked up the Isle with the rest of England.  It was the road from the south, and there the Romans had a station; the others led only to the farms and villages dependent upon the city.  Now they are prolonged by artifice into the modern causeways which run over the lower and new-made land.

The Isle has always stood like a fortress, and has always had a title and commandership, which once were very real things; the people told me that the King of England’s third title was Marquis of Ely, and I knew of myself that just before the civil wars the commandership of the Isle gave the power of raising men.

The ends of many wars drifted to this place to die.  Here was the last turn of the Saxon lords, and the last rally of the feudal rebellions of the thirteenth century.

Not that the fens were impassable or homeless, but they were difficult in patches; their paths were rare and laid upon no general system.  Their inhabited fields were isolated, their waters tidal, with great banks of treacherous mud, intricate and unbridged; such conditions are amply sufficient for a defensive war.  The flight of a small body in such a land can always baffle an army until that small body is thrust into some one refuge so well defended by marsh or river that the very defence cuts off retreat:  and a small body so brought to bay in such a place has this further advantage, that from the bits of higher land, the “Islands,” one of the first requirements of defence is afforded—­an unbroken view of every avenue by which attack can come.  There is no surprising such forts.

So much is in Ely to-day and a great deal more.  For instance (a third and last idea out of the thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet oracular.  The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied them in silence and for some considerable time.  This boast is made by many towns, that they hold a secret.  But Ely, which is rather a village than a town, has alone a true claim, the proof of which is this, that no one comes to Ely for a few hours and carries anything away, whereas no man lives in Ely for a year without beginning to write a book.  I do not say that all are published, but I swear that all are begun.

THE INN OF THE MARGERIDE

Whatever, keeping its proportion and form, is designed upon a scale much greater or much less than that of our general experience, produces upon the mind an effect of phantasy.