Old Shrines and Ivy

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VII. ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. ELY, C A Mbridgeshire, September 6,1891. ? Gray and sombre London, gloomy beneath vast clouds of steel and bronze, is once more left behind. Old Highgate flits by and we roll through the network of little towns that fills all the space between Horn- sey and Tottenham. The country along our course is one of exceptional interest, and but that Buggins the Builder has marred it by making the houses alike it would be one of peculiar beauty. Around Tottenham the dwellings are interspersed with meadows and there are market-gardens and nurseries of flowers, ? the bright green of carrot-tops and of the humble but portly cabbage being pleasantly relieved by masses of brilliant hollyhock. Broad fields ensue, ? cultivated to the utmost and smiling with plenty; and around some of the houses are beautiful green lawns, divided with hedges of hawthorn. The country, for the most part, islevel, and a fme effect is produced upon the landscape by single tall trees or by isolated groups of them, ? especially where the plain slopes gently toward gleaming rivulet and bird-haunted vale. Everywhere the aspect is that of prosperity and bloom. The sun has pierced the clouds and is faintly lighting with a golden haze this shadowy summer scene of loveliness and peace. In the distance are several small streams, dark, bright, and still, and near them many white and brown cattle, conspicuous in a sudden burst of sunshine, are couched under the trees. A little canal-boat, gayly painted red and green, winds slowly through the plain, and over the harvest fields the omnipresent rook wings his solemn flight or perches on the yellow sheaves. Chingford has been left to the east, ? where you may explore one of the most picturesque ruined churches in this country, and where they show you...