And so the days race away there in the middle of the mighty plain.  No plans are ever interrupted, no one questions one’s going and coming as one will, no one troubles his head about one’s occupations or pursuits.  Any help or advice that one needs is courteously and readily given, and no favours asked or expected in return.  One little incident gave me considerable amusement.  There is a private footpath of my own which leads close to my house; owing to the house having stood for some time unoccupied, people had tended to use it as a short cut.  The kindly farmer obviated this by putting up a little notice-board, to indicate that the path was private.  A day or two afterwards it was removed and thrown into a ditch.  I was perturbed as well as surprised by this, supposing that it showed that the notice had offended some local susceptibility; and being very anxious to begin my tenure on neighbourly terms, I consulted my genial landlord, who laughed, and said that there was no one who would think of doing such a thing; and to reassure me he added that one of his men had seen the culprit at work, and that it was only an old horse, who had rubbed himself against the post till he had thrown it down.

The days pass, then, in a delightful monotony; one reads, writes, sits or paces in the garden, scours the country on still sunny afternoons.  There are many grand churches and houses within a reasonable distance, such as the great churches near Wisbech and Lynn—­West Walton, Walpole St. Peter, Tilney, Terrington St. Clement, and a score of others—­great cruciform structures, in every conceivable style, with fine woodwork and noble towers, each standing in the centre of a tiny rustic hamlet, built with no idea of prudent proportion to the needs of the places they serve, but out of pure joy and pride.  There are houses like Beaupre, a pile of fantastic brick, haunted by innumerable phantoms, with its stately orchard closes, or the exquisite gables of Snore Hall, of rich Tudor brickwork, with fine panelling within.  There is no lack of shrines for pilgrimage—­then, too, it is not difficult to persuade some like-minded friend to share one’s solitude.  And so the quiet hours tick themselves away in an almost monastic calm, while one’s book grows insensibly day by day, as the bulrush rises on the edge of the dyke.

I do not say that it would be a life to live for the whole of a year, and year by year.  There is no stir, no eagerness, no brisk interchange of thought about it.  But for one who spends six months in a busy and peopled place, full of duties and discussions and conflicting interests, it is like a green pasture and waters of comfort.  The danger of it, if prolonged, would be that things would grow languid, listless, fragrant like the Lotos-eaters’ Isle; small things would assume undue importance, small decisions would seem unduly momentous; one would tend to regard one’s own features as in a mirror and through a magnifying glass.  But, on the other hand, it