28 JANUARY 



the little county is reckoned one of the less lovely* You 

 are above the line of the rooks nests in the elms, and 

 remember the day when a brown squirrel was seen in 

 specting the nests, and a great tit observed to build in 

 the base of one, and a single isolated nest was robbed 

 and torn up again and again. The hamlet, with its low 

 thatched cottages, looks very humble. How comes it 

 except from a great mystic sense of beauty in the English 

 people that so splendid a tower, so triumphant a west 

 arch, were built for so small a flock ? The comparison 

 between brook and bridge suggests a like question. The 

 pillars of the bridge, by which the villagers cross to the 

 church, would serve for a defensive keep. They are a 

 fortress, and for the glory of their antique form and 

 solidity find a place in the classic survey of our bridges. 

 Sometimes the bridge crosses only a dry corridor where 

 the water plantain grows tall and unbent and the forget- 

 me-nots spread like grass, and the cows and dragonflies 

 have some ado to find a drop of moisture in a few deep 

 foot-marks. Doubtless the village knew more spacious 

 days. You see from your high tower, bosomed in trees, 

 as Milton pictured, a level space half surrounded by a 

 moat now given up wholly to immense eels and a number 

 of moor-hen. The very green glebe, well stocked with 

 milch cows, has hollows and hillocks that betoken old 

 foundations. When the English language was growing 

 into its own and shaking off the foreign sounds in the 

 monasteries round about the valley of the Nene that 

 nursery of English as the Avon of England more and 

 greater people lived in the hamlet ; but then, too, when 

 the neighbouring Fens were fens indeed, and even the 

 wolf found harbourage, the English village hung round 

 the church with the same local and spiritual affec 

 tions as to-day. Some interest in natural history helps 



