elms, in the heavy laden orchards, and in the luxuriant blackberries of the wayside. They are just England, or one of the features of England, at its best; and those who have travelled most of this world of ours will agree that any feature of England, at its best, takes a very great deal of beating. CHAPTER VIII COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY An afternoon's drive--Lexden--Close to Colchester--Earlier visit assumed--Probable site of Cunobelin's city--Position described by the _Quarterly_--Boadicea's revenge--Stoke by Nayland--A commanding hill--The church--Constable's praise--Gainsborough at Sudbury--"Damn your nose, madam!"--Gainsborough at school--"Tom Peartree"--Gainsborough's Suffolk landscapes--Long Melford--A halt for an exceptional church--Seventeenth-century monograph on--Inscriptions in flint--Long Melford a centre of the cloth trade--The Martins, or Martyns, and the church--Its past glories--Its splendid treasures--Ancient customs--The Cordells--Cavendish, the home of the Cavendish family--Clare and "the illustrious family of Clare"--Strongbow--The Valley of the Colne--The De Veres and Castle Hedingham--Macaulay on their fame--Their end--Little Maplestead--A round church--Back to Colchester. A nice little drive, with a pause for tea and antiquarianism, of forty or fifty miles may be taken from Colchester any fine summer's afternoon by following something like the route here laid down. Thirty years ago this sentence would have been held to be proof positive of lunacy in the writer; now it is a conspicuous illustration of his willingness to be contented with moderately long journeys. It is a willingness, save the mark, which grows on the motorist with experience and familiarity with the new locomotion.