Leaving Cromer take the Aylmerton or as it called the upper road to Holt, which is preferable to the lower road running through Runton, Beeston, and Sherringham, both because it is in itself better, and because the views of the sea and country are more amusing.
The distance by either is ten miles. Concluding therefore that the Aylmerton road is taken, at the distance of about a mile and half from Cromer are the plantations of the Rt. Hon. Wm. Wyndham, of Felbrigg, which accompany the traveller on his left for more than half a mile, during which space the views of the sea on the right are very pleasing.
The fore-ground being high, the eye is carried down a pretty steep descent towards the shore, and being also a very unequal surface, a constant variety is produced, the inequalities forming themselves into vallies, through which is frequently seen, a church, a cottage or a village to great advantage.
This is a very common species of landscape. The towns and villages with their churches situated on the verge of the coast, must consequently often assume this appearance when seen from situations more inland, but more particularly, when, as is here the case, the surface of the country is uneven and sometimes woody.
It is a very happy circumstance in views of this kind when a woody knoll presents itself as a fore-ground, this with a church or village in the second distance, having the whole backed by the sea, is a composition that can scarcely fail to please.
A little beyond the plantations before mentioned, which form a part of the belt round Felbrigg Park, the sea is lost for about a mile, but ample compensation is made by the country on the left which is very rich and fertile. The Felbrigg woods with the village of Aylmerton and its church form a noble fore-ground, beyond which the view extends upwards of twenty miles over a highly cultivated country; amongst the numerous churches, the cathedral at Norwich is very conspicuous.
I entirely agree with Mr. Gilpin that a country retiring into a remote distance is amongst the most pleasing circumstances in landscape, but when it happens, as it does here, to be supported by objects near at hand it is enchanting. It is not unfrequent that a dreary heath is terminated by a very pleasing distance, and it is certainly a very happy circumstance for the traveller who views a country with a picturesque eye when it is so, but it loses much for want of a fore-ground to support it; sometimes here and there how an accidental group of cattle form a pleasing substitute.
The most beautiful effect given to a distance I ever saw was one evening, in my return from Holt, in the month of April. The forepart of the day had been cold and gloomy with frequent squalls, but towards the evening the sun broke out at intervals with the utmost brilliancy, lighting up in succession different parts of the landscape; the fore-ground was principally in shadow, as was the second distance, but the remote distance partook of the colour of the horizon which was a bright yellow, but kept down by the mistiness of the atmosphere;—the utmost keeping was preserved, producing at once the most sober and yet the most brilliant picture that can possibly be conceived. The clouds, except those in the western hemisphere, floated in large dark masses, intermixed with smaller light ones of the tenderest blue.
The view towards the sea, though, but faintly illuminated, was no less pleasing, so that three or four pictures, all completely differing in circumstance and detail, might have been painted from a scene with little to recommend it, except where the sea formed a part of the view.
Upon the disposition of the air depends the colouring of the landscape, of which no part of it partakes so much as the remote distance, and to this it is that we owe that exquisite obscurity and tenderness which stamp such value upon a distant prospect.