In the first place, such country gives a wonderful sense of expanse and
space; from an eminence of a few feet you can see what in other parts
of England you have to climb a considerable hill to discern. I love to
feast my eyes on the interminable rich level plain, with its black and
crumbling soil; the long simple lines of dykes and water-courses carry
the eye peacefully out to a great distance; then, too, by having all
the landscape compressed into so narrow a space, into a belt of what
is, to the eye, only a few inches in depth, you get an incomparable
richness of colour. The solitary distant clumps of trees surrounding a
lonely farm gain a deep intensity of tint from the vast green level all
about them; and the line of the low far-off wolds, that close the view
many miles away, is of a peculiar delicacy and softness; the eye, too,
is provided with a foreground of which the elements are of the
simplest; a reedy pool enclosed by willows, the clustered buildings of
a farmstead; a grey church-tower peering out over churchyard elms; and
thus, instead of being checked by near objects, and hemmed in by the
limited landscape, the eye travels out across the plain with a sense of
freedom and grateful repose. Then, too, there is the huge perspective
of the sky; nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, the slow
march of clouds from horizon to horizon; it all gives a sense of
largeness and tranquillity such as you receive upon the sea, with the
additional advantage of having the solid earth beneath you, green and
fertile, instead of the steely waste of waters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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