CHARMS OF NORTHERN SUBURBS 161 



Charles Lamb referred to when he wrote: "A 

 sweeter spot is not in ten counties round ; you are 

 knee- deep in clover, that is to say, if you are not 

 above a middling man's height ; from this paradise, 

 making a day of it, you go to see the ruins of aa 

 old convent at March Hall, where some of the 

 painted glass is yet whole and .fresh. .;If you do 

 not know this, you do not know the capabilities of 

 this country, you may be said .to be .a -stranger to 

 Enfield. I found it out one morning in October, 

 and so delighted^was I; that L did not get home 

 before dark, well a-paid." .; 



The other portion of the Brook . flows through 

 meadows and cultivated land, divided in one place 

 by a railway embankment, having beneath a long 

 tunnel through which the stream flows. Owing to 

 this and another tunnel becoming stopped, during 

 a violent storm, the surrounding fields were, on one 

 occasion, flooded, the water in places being twenty 

 feet or more deep. From the railway the view 

 was as though a great lake had suddenly been 

 formed. The remarkable thing was the rapidity 

 with which the water receded ; in a few hours all 

 was gone, and the stream had got back to its 

 natural flow, but leaving the green meadows and 

 fields, with their growing crops, looking like mud 

 flats in the Essex marshes. 



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