IPSWICH, WOODBRIDGE, PARHAM, AND FRAMLINGHAM

To set out on a tour through East Anglia without first ascertaining East Anglia's extent and precise bounds, is to enter upon a somewhat vague and venturesome enterprise; yet that is what I am about to do, and with little care as to where my wanderings may take me. As a matter of fact, the limits of East Anglia have never, since the days of the East Anglian kings, been clearly defined, and I doubt whether even in their time it was known with absolute certainty where Northumbria and Mercia ended and East Anglia began. Norfolk and Suffolk are certainly in East Anglia, and so, too, are portions of Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire; but I question whether even the London Society of East Anglians, widely as it defines the term "East Anglian," would consider as such a man born in, say, Grimsby or Leytonstone. So it is left for every one to decide for himself how much of Eastern England is East Anglia; and as this gives me a fairly wide field for travel I may well set out with a light heart, little

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heeding how often I stray from the great high roads or cross from one county into another. Yet at the outset I realise that I must be content with journeying through some parts of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, and leave Lincolnshire to some other highway and byway peregrinator. Even so curtailed, my itinerary will be as remarkable for what it misses as what it brings me in touch with; but the square acreage of the Eastern counties is so considerable that this is unavoidable. Still, there is satisfaction in knowing that whatever

Ipswich.

route one takes it cannot prove a barren one, for Eastern England is so rich in romantic, historical, and legendary interest, and so full of relics of the days when that interest was created, that go where you will between Ipswich and Ely, and Thetford and the shores of the North Sea, you will always find your eyes and mind pleasantly occupied. This wealth of diverse interest goes far towards atoning for the monotony of much of the scenery, which is generally of a pastoral kind. Although the lowland districts afford wide and inspiring vistas, East Anglian scenery can nowhere be described as grand or sublime, and it only attains to perfect charm and