Most writers, and particularly Mr. Camden, and most strangers, have an injurious opinion of this country, and apply that to the whole which is true but of part of it: for in the main the land is admirably good, hard, and dry; produces excellent corn and grass; feeds innumerable sheep and oxen of a very large size, and good flesh and wool; bears wood extremely well, has several large woods in it, some intirely of oak of considerable size; is full of hedge-rows and quicksets, and in summer time looks like the garden of Eden: it is level, and most delightful to travellers, whether on horseback, or in a coach. The air indeed is moist, as being near the sea, and bordering upon the fens of the isle of Ely: as to the first, it is the same upon every sea coast; as to the latter, they are chiefly on the south side, whence the sun for the most part draws off the vapours from this country. Indeed this inconvenience accrues from such vicinity, the production of gnats; to which Angelus Politianus has done so much honour in that beautiful Greek epigram you showed me; and is well guarded against by the gentry in the use of netted canopies hung round their beds, which was an invention of the Ægyptians living in a like country. Vide Brown’s Garden of Cyrus, p. 30. But all things necessary for the comfort of life are here in great plenty; and visitants ever go away with a better opinion of it than they bring. That great soul king Charles I. himself undertaking the glorious talk, and others under him, had projected and made such stately works of _sewers_, as would have rendered this country before now, for trade and beauty, the rival of its name-sake beyond sea; but the licentious times that succeeded, gave the unthinking mob (incited by his avowed adversary in all things, Cromwell) an opportunity to destroy them. I have often considered and admired the length, breadth, and depth of their canals, the vastness of their gotes and sluices: indeed I think they made many more than were useful, and might have laid out the whole in a better manner. I would not, like the Trojan Prophetess, prognosticate ill to my own country; but it is not difficult to foresee, that unless some project be taken in hand, like that which my friend Mr. Kinderley published some time ago, this vast and rich tract must be abandoned to eels and wild ducks. A thing of this nature is not to be done but by the senate of the kingdom taking the matter intirely into their own hands; and if I have any judgement, whatever new works are made, ought always to be carried eastward only, for reasons I inculcated before: therefore, instead of deriving the Welland into the Witham, as was his notion, I would have it brought to the Nen, and both into the Ouse at Lynn, as it was in its original and natural state.