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world, and I
would resign all the conveniences I possess with the utmost readiness
for it. But a great passion cannot be the result of reflection, or of desire,
or even of hope. One cannot argue oneself into it; one must be carried
away. "You have never let yourself go," says a wise and gentle aunt,
when I bemoan my unhappy fate. To which I reply that I have never
done anything else. I have lain down in streamlets, I have leapt into
silent pools, I have made believe I was in the presence of a deep
emotion, like the dear little girl in one of Reynolds's pictures, who hugs
a fat and lolling spaniel over an inch-deep trickle of water, for fear he
should be drowned. I do not say that it is not my fault. It is my fault,
my own fault, my own great fault, as we say in the Compline
confession. The fault has been an over-sensibility. I have desired close
and romantic relations so much that I have dissipated my forces; yet
when I read such a book as the love-letters of Robert Browning and
Elizabeth Barrett, I realise at once both the supreme nature of the gift,
and the hopelessness of attaining it unless it be given; but I try to
complain, as the beloved mother of Carlyle said about her health, as
little as possible.
Well, then, as I say, what is a reluctant bachelor who loves his liberty
to do with himself? I cannot abide the life of towns, though I live in a
town half the year. I like friends, and I do not care for acquaintances.
There is no conceivable reason why, in the pursuit of pleasure, I should
frequent social entertainments that do not amuse me. What have I then
done? I have done what I liked best. I have taken a big roomy house in
the quietest country I could find, I have furnished it comfortably, and I
have hitherto found no difficulty in inducing my friends. one or two at
a time, to come and share my life. I shall have something to say about
solitude presently, but meanwhile I will describe my hermitage.
The old Isle of Ely lies in the very centre of the Fens. It is a range of
low gravel hills, shaped roughly like a human hand. The river runs at
the wrist, and Ely stands just above it, at the base of the palm, the
fingers stretching out to the west. The fens themselves, vast peaty
plains, the bottoms of the old lagoons, made up of the accumulation of
centuries of rotting water-plants, stretch round it on every side; far
away you can see the low heights of Brandon, the Newmarket Downs,

the Gogmagogs behind Cambridge, the low wolds of Huntingdon. To
the north the interminable plain, through which the rivers welter and
the great levels run, stretches up to the Wash. So slight is the fall of the
land towards the sea, that the tide steals past me in the huge
Hundred-foot cut, and makes itself felt as far south as Earith Bridge,
where the Ouse comes leisurely down with its clear pools and
reed-beds. At the extremity of the southernmost of all the fingers of the
Isle, a big hamlet clusters round a great ancient church, whose blunt
tower is visible for miles above its grove of sycamores. More than
twelve centuries ago an old saint, whose name I think was Owen,
though it was Latinised by the monks into Ovinus, because he had the
care of the sheep, kept the flocks of St. Etheldreda, queen and abbess of
Ely, on these wolds. One does not know what were the visions of this
rude and ardent saint, as he paced the low heights day by day, looking
over the monstrous lakes. At night no doubt he heard the cries of the
marsh-fowl and saw the elfin lights stir on the reedy flats. Perhaps
some touch of fever kindled his visions; but he raised a tiny shrine here,
and here he laid his bones; and long after, when the monks grew rich,
they raised a great church here to the memory of the shepherd of the
sheep, and beneath it, I doubt not, he sleeps.
What is it I see from my low hills? It is an enchanted land for me, and I
lose myself in wondering how it is that no one, poet or artist, has ever
wholly found out the charm of these level plains, with their rich black
soil, their straight dykes, their great drift-roads, that run as far as the
eye can reach into the unvisited fen. In summer it is a feast of the
richest green from verge to verge; here a clump of trees stands up,