bearded man, with a tunic confined round the waist by a cord, which
crowns one of my rockeries. But it is all gone now, and the pert
cockneyfied house stands up among the shrubberies and walnuts,
surveying the ruins of what has been.

But I must not abuse my house, because whatever it is outside, it
is absolutely comfortable and convenient within: it is solid, well
built, spacious, sensible, reminding one of the "solid joys and
lasting treasure" that the hymn says "none but Zion's children
know." And, indeed, it is a Zion to be at ease in.

One other great charm it has: from the end of my orchard the ground
falls rapidly in a great pasture. Some six miles away, over the
dark expanse of Grunty Fen, the towers of Ely, exquisitely delicate
and beautiful, crown the ridge; on clear sunny days I can see the
sun shining on the lead roofs, and the great octagon rises with all
its fretted pinnacles. Indeed, so kind is Providence, that the huge
brick mass of the Ely water-tower, like an overgrown Temple of
Vesta, blends itself pleasantly with the cathedral, projecting from
the western front like a great Galilee.

The time to make pious pilgrimage to Ely is when the apple-orchards
are in bloom. Then the grim western tower, with its sombre windows,
the gabled roofs of the canonical houses, rise in picturesque
masses over acres of white blossom. But for me, six miles away, the
cathedral is a never-ending sight of beauty. On moist days it draws
nearer, as if carved out of a fine blue stone; on a grey day it
looks more like a fantastic crag, with pinnacles of rock. Again it
will loom a ghostly white against a thunder-laden sky. Grand and
pathetic at once, for it stands for something that we have parted