S^^3^fc;i 
 
 HE Magic Carpet. 
 
 B\ 
 
 EDWARD fflBAHLT DIBDIB, 
 
 President of 
 Photognip' 
 
 ypticti Afftdteur 
 'Hon (iqo3j. 
 
 LIVERPOOL 
 
 Hsv;:, ^ 
 
 PRICE SIXPENCE. 
 
The Magic Carpet 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD EIMBAULT DBDIN, 
 
 President of the Liverpool Amateur 
 Photographic Association ( iqo2). 
 
 LIVERPOOL : 
 Hbnuy Young A Sons, 12, SoniH Castle arRKEX. 
 
■^03 
 
 Forty numbered and signed' copies, 
 on large and, fine paper (one side only), 
 suitable for illustration : price 2s. Gd. 
 each. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To the intending reader of this brochure I wish to 
 explain that what it contains was not written for 
 publication in print, nor even for delivery as a lecture 
 sufficient in itself. Once, indeed, when a pei^on 
 entinisted with the relative box of lantem-slides failed 
 to put in an appearance, I made shift to entertain an 
 audience with my unadorned prose and verse, and the 
 kind people sat it out politely, clapping quite heartily 
 when some one proposed and another seconded a vote 
 of thanks. I pitied and honoured them. The only 
 person wearing a dissatisfied expression was a stone-deaf 
 old lady, who came early (with her knitting), and took 
 the middle of the front row so as to see the pictures 
 well. The whole business, however, was depressing : it 
 was like reading a libretto to a company assembled to 
 hear an opera. That is just what this is — a libretto for 
 lantern pictures. It was written some years ago, with 
 two aims — to provide a verbal string upon which to 
 thread a collection of otherwise unrelated photographs, 
 and also to offer to fellow-members of the Livei'pool 
 Amateur Photographic Association an object lesson in 
 the art of lecture makiag, as a small return for all they 
 had taught me in regard to photography. It seemed 
 to me that their pictures were very much better than 
 their lectures: and that it need not be so. That, 
 
although the latter must of necessity be auxiliary to the 
 former, they might still show some approach to literary 
 form and finish. My experiment was successful as a 
 lecture, and I hope it has had some influence for good on 
 the writers of other lectures. Mr. Paul Lange — perhaps 
 because he had least to learn from me — has been a 
 particularly generous critic, and some time ago he 
 suggested that the lecture might be made more widely 
 useful by a competition to illustrate it. There is 
 a peculiarly infectious quality in his enthusiasm — he 
 not only makes his colleagues do what he wishes, but he 
 even compels them to think as he does. So, in the 
 event, here is the text of my lecture printed — primarily 
 in order that it may be available for reference by com- 
 petitors for a special prize to be awarded to the best set 
 of not more than forty illustrative slides. To such 
 competitors I make no apology, for I have at least given 
 them a wide range of themes for illustration. To all 
 othei-s I can only say — " Do not forget that this is only 
 a libretto — the more vigorous and versatile your pictorial 
 imagination the better it will seem. At the worst you 
 are in a better case than the stone-deaf lady, who had 
 no other entertainment for more than an hour (besides 
 turning the heel of her stocking) than to watch a very 
 unhappy showman trying to disguise the lack of anything 
 to show; who yet was too polite to get up and go out, 
 for which her name should be writ large in the roll of 
 modern heroines. 
 
 E. RIMBAULT DIBDIN. 
 
The Magic Carpet, 
 
 When reading faiiy tales to children I have been struck 
 by manifestations of a critical disposition, which I 
 venture to think is new and significant. " But it's only 
 a story: it's not true?" is the portentous juvenile 
 attitude to-day towards the dear old taradiddles which 
 in my boyhood were accepted implicitly. I am certain 
 it never occurred to me that ^sop was a liar because he 
 made animals talk. I have spent many a happy sunlit 
 hour trying to arrange a system of Volapuk with our 
 cat, and hunting in likely places for the magic ring 
 which, you will recollect, enabled the lovely Princess (I 
 forget her name) to understand the talk, and control 
 the services of all the birds. A thing like that would 
 be most useful, and was worth taking any amount of 
 trouble to find. I think there is very little of that sort 
 of thing nowadays. Now, as R. L. Stevenson put it — 
 
 Now in the elder's seat, 
 We rest with quiet feet ; 
 And from the window bay 
 We watch the children, our successors play. 
 
 But they play, it seems to me, with a difference : the 
 children of a generation that fell from simple faith in 
 dogma, doubted miracles, and denied literal inspiration, 
 have inherited the blight of scepticism ; and doubt even 
 fairy tales; — an excess of heterodoxy the most dreadful 
 imaginable. Just think how barren must be a child- 
 hood void of faith in the actuality of Hop o" my Thumb, 
 the Sleeping Princess, Aladdin's LamjD, Beauty and the 
 Beast, and Little Red Riding Hood ! It seems scarcely 
 worth while to be such a child ; — it certainly wont be 
 comfortable to be the man of whom he is to be the 
 father. In a world full of such people Poetry will die. 
 Painting will be impossible, and Sculpture ridiculous ; 
 even Music, heavenly maid, will cut a sorry figure. 
 
 You may observe premonitions of decay already in the 
 imaginative arts. In the days when they were great 
 and glorious it was the thing said that mattered ; now it 
 
is the utterance we think about. The poets are become 
 jugglers with words, makers of mosaics in sweet 
 syllables; the painters are concerned about touch, tone 
 and texture; they unite to decry the man as no artist 
 who dares meddle with a story or a moral. As for the 
 musicians : well, they at least have a great ideal leader, 
 whose piping they all follow joyously. To what River 
 Weser is he leading them, I wonder? 
 
 This world is one of compensations, and if, as I fear 
 is the case, civilized man has become so nearly civilized 
 — has gone so far on the way to maturity — that even 
 children are bom with old heads on their shouldei^s — 
 (poor little things!) — the culprit, Science, makes some 
 atonement. Science is killing and dissecting our fairy 
 tales, our credulities, our fearful joy in the unseen, our 
 poetry, our art, our music; — is awakening mankind 
 from the sensuous dreams of youth, and bidding put 
 off childish things and be as men. Yet every day she 
 tells us wonders greater far than the most wonderful 
 inventions of barbarous imagination. What teller of 
 faiiy tales, what inspired poet has ever been able to 
 conceive such marvels as those with which the modem 
 magicians of test-tube, crucible, microscope and battery, 
 have filled the life of this century? 
 
 That entertaining fabulist, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote a 
 quaint fantasy, in which the fair Scheherazade, on the 
 one thousand and second night of her precarious married 
 life, continued the adventures of Sinbad. She told her 
 husband how that Ancient Mariner set out once more 
 on his travels, in what is described as a terrific monster 
 of the deep, but was, of course, a steamboat. He saw 
 all sorts of marvels, easily recognisable as commonplaces 
 of modern life ; and, as poor Scheherazade proceeded 
 with her recital, his Majesty grew more and more 
 impatient. Once only she slipt into a comfortable lie 
 about a continent supported entirely on the back of a 
 sky-blue cow, with four hundred horns, — and that nearly 
 saved the situation. Schahriar exclaimed, " that, now, 
 I believe, because T have read something of the kind in 
 a hook." But she dropt back into the tinith, with the 
 result that her justly enraged lord and master 
 remembered his long-defeiTed vow, said his moming 
 
prayei-s like the good Mussulman that he was, and bade 
 her get up at once and prepare her swan-like neck for 
 the customary bowstring. 
 
 This chance reference to the Arabian Nights' Enter- 
 tainments brings me to my text, which is taken from 
 the pleasant tale of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Pari 
 Banou. You doubtless remember the story of that other 
 Sultan of India, whose three sons all fell in love with 
 their beauteous cousin, the Princess Nouronnihar. As 
 the old gentleman could not make up his mind which of 
 them was to have her (the lady does not seem to have 
 been consulted), he sent the youths off upon their 
 travels, promising that whichever should bring back to 
 him as a gift the most extraordinary rarity, should have 
 the lady. I dont propose to weary you with the 
 remarkable experiences of the travellers, as they 
 wandered under tropic skies : time does not permit, for 
 your Arabian storyteller is never in any huriy. At last, 
 returning with their presents, they met by appointment. 
 Prince Houssain produced a carpet capable of carrying 
 him, or anyone else, instantaneously wherever he might 
 desire to go. Ali's gift was an ivory tube, which enabled 
 you to see anything you "washed, no matter how distant. 
 Prince Houssain, by way of test, at once clapped the 
 tube to his eye, and (somewhat indiscreetly) desired to 
 see the Princess. With a sudden cry of dismay he let 
 it fall. "Whatever is the matter?" exclaimed Ahmed. 
 "Is another wooer taking advantage of our absence?" 
 asked Ali. "Brothers! " cried Houssain, "it is indeed 
 another and an irresistible wooer that is with her : the 
 delight of our eyes is at the point of death. The 
 physicians have given her up, and professional weeping 
 women have already been called in, and are seated, 
 howling, all round the room!" 
 
 " I'm very pleased to hear it." said Ahmed. His 
 brothers stared. " Our presents dovetail beautifully," he 
 continued. " Ali's ivorv tube has sho^vn us the sad 
 state of matters, Houssain 's carpet will carry us home in 
 the t\rinkling of an eye ; and, when we are there, ^my 
 present, this apple, will do all the rest. If the Princess 
 has only one breath left, she has but to sniff it, and she 
 will be instantly quite restored." 
 
3 
 
 Within three seconds after Ali had spoken, they all 
 came down plump in the sickroom. Ahmed, regardless 
 of the proprieties, ran to the dying Princess before any 
 one could intercept him, and, just as she was giving her 
 very last gasp, clapt the apple to her nose. In five 
 minutes she was sitting up in bed as perky as possible. 
 
 The point of this digression is in the application. 
 
 It is Poe's thousand and second night over again. 
 Here is a stoiy which proceeds with the assistance of 
 incredible marvels. Bedouins, sitting round the brazier 
 at night, smoking and listening, believe in every one of 
 them ; we laugh at them as clumsy inventions. Why ? 
 Because modem science has familiarised us vdth things 
 even more wonderful ; and, we see by comparison the 
 childishness of inventions with which barbaric imagina- 
 tion foreshadowed them. The tourist system of the 
 Magic Carpet fails to convince minds familiar with the 
 wonders worked by steam and electricity and photo- 
 graphy; the ivory tube is ousted by the telescope, the 
 microscope, the telegraph, the telephone, the phono- 
 graph, the stethoscope, the spectroscope, the Rontgen 
 Rays. As for the magic apple — if it is not quite 
 equalled by the exceeding marvels of modem medicine 
 and surgeiy — the deficiency seems to be quite supplied 
 by those wonderful patent medicines advertised on every 
 hoarding, any one of which will cure anything whatever. 
 
 It is an age of many magic carpets ; we shall now 
 chiefly concern ourselves with one, that which is pro- 
 vided by the wonderful science of photography, by 
 means of which we may sit at home in slippered ease, 
 yet see at will any part of the world. 
 
 If you want to realise what we owe to it, just turn 
 to the files of the best illustrated papers published a 
 generation ago, and compare their purile representations 
 of foreign scenes and events with the pictures which the 
 illustrated papers of to-day produce. 
 
 Nansen goes into the terrible icy solitudes of the 
 North with a camera, and brings back pictures of 
 wonders hitherto unknown save to the few stron£T and 
 intrepid spirits that dared the dangers and discomforts 
 of exploration. Our troops penetrate to Khartoum or 
 Pretoria, and in a week or two their brilliant deeds are 
 
pictured for us. We sit at home and look out 
 omnispectively over all the world ; or rather, that Magic 
 Carpet spread over all the earth's surface, which we call 
 the world. 
 
 That is the true Magic CaiiDet ; infinitely old, yet ever 
 new ; ever changing, ;'et ever the same ; beautiful, with 
 every variety of beauty, and comprehending likewise all 
 ugliness, which is the convenient term we use to describe 
 those manifestations of beauty we do not understand. 
 A carpet divinely woven in the beginning, in such wise 
 that it may never wear out while mankind endures; 
 woven by the dilligent sunbeams, with air and water for 
 woof, on the bare warp of the earth. The oldest of 
 Greek philosophers taught that all things came in the 
 beginning from water, and another who followed him 
 declared for fire as the originating force. We know 
 now that they were both very much in the right, and 
 that there was really very little difference between 
 them : even the Birkenhead Coi-poration knows that 
 water can be made into inflammable ga-s. 
 
 How this solid globe came into existence, and what 
 it is, we don't in the least know. We do know, however, 
 that but for water and air, which are as inseparable as 
 genius and self-esteem, — but for water and air (and 
 especially water) this magic carpet that covers the 
 earth's bare boards could not exist. Without it she 
 would be like her melancholy sister, the Lady Moon, 
 who with sad steps wanders eternally throu2:h space — a 
 huge wrinkled cinder, desolate, childless, lifeless; use- 
 less, save as a very imperfect and intermittent night 
 reflector of the sun. and as something appropriately 
 fickle and changeable for lovers to swear by when utter- 
 ing vows of eternal constancy. 
 
 So it is comfortable to know that the greater part of 
 the earth's surface is covered with water. It is 
 characteristic of our superficial way of lookinsf at things 
 that we describe the sea as barren and desolate; — that 
 is because things don't grow on its upper surface any 
 more than they do on the upper surface of the 
 atmosDheric ocean, on the bottom of which we are 
 crawling about ; but wherever water is you may be sure 
 there is life in abundance, unless air be excluded. 
 
10 
 
 Silence aud desolation are to be found only in deserts 
 where rain does not fall and water never comes : wastes 
 of sand and rock, only one degree removed from utter 
 bareness because nowhere is moisture quite absent; 
 wastes across which living creatures cannot travel unless 
 they contrive to can-y w^th them enough of the 
 inestimably precious fluid to supply their needs. The 
 sun pours down his quickening rays in vain, the barren 
 sand remains barren ; even he is not omnipotent. There 
 are surely no deserts in Persia, else we should never have 
 had sun-woi^hip. One is not surprised to find that the 
 complicated theology of Ancient Egypt had its origin in 
 the worship of water, that supreme element, but for 
 which the cradle of arts, of sciences, of civilizations and 
 of religions would have been an undistinguishable strip 
 of the mighty surrounding desert. At least that is what 
 the antiquaries say ; but I don't venture to dogmatise : 
 it is so easy to go astray on museum evidence, like Mr. 
 Pickwick and Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck. When the 
 archaeologists of ten thousand years hence come 
 a-digging in the rubbish-mounds that were England's 
 towTis and villages, they will be apt to think we were 
 water-worshippers; so pious that the deity was laid on 
 to every house by means of pipes, and honoured in every 
 village by the erection of a central pump ! 
 
 So this magic caqDet, this wonderful visible world of 
 beauty, like our own bodies, consists principally of 
 water. 'WHierever water is, life abounds : a fact which 
 microscopy has made familiar. It is possible for a 
 scientific worker to separate water from all impurities, 
 and, as long as it is isolated from air, to keep it so. But 
 give it the least chance, and the purity is at an end. 
 Its business is the weaving of the Magic Cai-pet, and off 
 some of it goes into the air, which gives the rest micro- 
 organisms in exchange. Tlie merest drop will be found 
 to contain countless vegetable and animal wonders. Even 
 inorganic chemistr}' depends upon water, a fact familiar 
 to photographei^s, whose highly sensitive salts of silver 
 are unaffected by light so long as they are kept in a 
 dry vacuum. 
 
 "Withdraw water, and immediately all would be dust 
 and ashes. Tlie busy sun is for ever hard at work 
 
11 
 
 licking It up; and, if he could only keep ell that he 
 takes, the process of extermination would be a speedy 
 one. He is not able, however, to do so, because, big as 
 he is, he cant be all round the world at once. When 
 he is away, his pretended ally, the air, cools down in its 
 allegiance, clouds form, cold breezes blow, and then 
 down comes the water again, in seething sheets of rain, 
 upon the mountain tops. The sun, like Sisyphus, never 
 relaxes his labours, and never makes any real progress, 
 unless it be in the opposite direction ; for this pei-petual 
 drawing and emptying back of water is the machinery 
 by which rocks are ground down into fertile meadows 
 and plains capable of sustaining life ; by which they are 
 continually being renovated. A river has often been 
 used as a symbol of human life ; it is more — it is the 
 visible embodiment of the wonderful system by which 
 life is made possible. 
 
 Nothing should appeal more forcibly to our imagina- 
 tion than rivers, unless it be the sea or the clouds, both 
 of which are the world's rivers in other stages of trans- 
 formation. And yet we treat them but cavalierly. We 
 will readily go aside to look approvingly at a cascade, 
 especially if a poet has written some doggrel about it, 
 or a judicious owner has hall-marked the thing by 
 fencing it in and providing a paygate. We will pause 
 on a rustic bridge to enjoy the beauty that always 
 lingers by waterways. Some of us will gladly go for a 
 stretch in a row-boaf, and others will take pleasure in 
 hauntinor runnins: waters with hook and bait at one end 
 of rod and line, and — themselves at the other. But it 
 seldom, if ever, occurs to us to regard a river as a com- 
 plete individuality, worth the trouble of a thorough 
 investigation. We have the excuse that in this country, 
 where the Game Laws do not as yet class property 
 owners as vermin, rivers are usually difficult of access. 
 They are not wide and deep enough to be explored in 
 a boat or canoe ; they are not (except in the severest 
 winter weather) suitable for walking, and the banks are 
 for the most part jealously guarded against trespassers 
 by the fortunate people for whom God especially created 
 ail such beautiful places, and who very naturallv and 
 properly fence off their possessions from contamination, 
 with barbed wire and other convincing arguments. 
 
12 
 
 Probably it is for this reason our British rivers and 
 streams are neglected, and are like to remain so until 
 some Stevenson arises to write them into fame. I have 
 had a peculiar regard for waterways ever since, as a 
 small boy, I, like him, first became acquainted with 
 untamed nature while exploring the classic Braid Burn 
 from Morningside up to its first tricklings on the 
 Pentland Slopes. In the life of a boy who has been 
 carefully brought up to walk only on life's dusty beaten 
 tracks, and never even to look over the fence, it is a 
 memorable epoch when, at last, he greatly resolves to be 
 tantalised no longer by his desires; and, making a 
 sudden rush for a padlocked gate, or a gap in the hedge, 
 plunges into the heart of Nature and all the joy of 
 Freedom. Oh, the mingled delight and terror of those 
 early rambles ! Past tiie mad-liouse, where you could 
 often hear the poor maniacs shout, which was delectable ; 
 past the mysterious tunnel, which juvenile tradition 
 declared to be the issue of an underground passage from 
 the distant castle, full of the bony relics of rash 
 explorers ; through the tunnel under the road, so charm- 
 ing because you couldn't help getting your feet wet in 
 transit ; on by the meadows, where the burn meandered 
 with the seeming aimlessness and real purposeful ness of 
 a charming essayist ; on, despite encounters with irate 
 agriculturists, and still more dreaded dogs; past the 
 haunt of the weasels, which had been known to fly at 
 boys' throats and then and there suck out their life- 
 blood ; on over the decayed lockgate, whence our buxom 
 washerwoman, returning from Edinburgh overweighted 
 with soiled linen and bad whisky, had fallen prone 
 among the flags and watercresses, to lie there hopelessly 
 chained down by her burdens until her gudeman, 
 trudging wearily homeward at dusk, espied something 
 whitish and unusual in the bed of the stream, and so 
 happily came to the rescue. On, past the prehistoric 
 Catstane and up to Swanston hamlet, where, if the afore- 
 said washerwoman were at home, she was good for a slice 
 of cold puddintr — pale looking, with more white suetty 
 spots than currants, but to the hungi-y juvenile traveller 
 far, far more delicio is than the costlier puddings of 
 home. On again to the uplands, among the heather 
 
13 
 
 and fern and bluebells and bees, and exquisite music of 
 the tinkling rill breaking the perfumed silence. 
 
 Memories of these halcyon days when the summers 
 were interminable, and evei-y day that the sun shone 
 contained more houx^ than a week does now, have ever 
 since given me a liking for the investigation of rivers 
 and streams ; and if there is any one still sufficiently old- 
 fashioned to go on tramp with knapsack on back, I 
 seriously recommend rivers to his attention. 
 
 As in most things, it is best to begin at the beginning. 
 Rivers really know more about the art of sightseeing 
 than the best guide book, and if you will only let one 
 take you, as it were, by the hand, it will show you a far 
 more delightful variety of Nature "s wonders than a 
 ticket by the most approved tourist route. You will 
 find it an unsurpassed master of that method of surprises 
 which is the essential device of all the arts that minister 
 to our higher pleasures. 
 
 High up on the mountains, most likely, far beyond 
 human habitation, on a shoulder just beneath some 
 mighty summit from v\^hich you may look uninter- 
 ruptedly to the far horizon in every direction ; there, in 
 some vast marshy solitude you come to a little runnel of 
 clear cool water trickling out of the mossy rock. It 
 looks a small matter, yet here is the beginning of a great 
 river, which shall carry the rainfall of thousands of 
 square miles dowTi to the sea. As yet the infant 
 scarcely knows what to be at, but presently, if you 
 follow, you will find it chattering briskly along a well- 
 defined channel, sometimes tumbling with a relish over 
 rocks and boulders, or linsferinof in a brigfht translucent 
 pool. As yet there are no trees, no men, no houses; it 
 is only a bare and bleak sheepwalk, where none of these 
 are possible. Yet the blue sky overhead, the w^hite 
 clouds that look so near and travel so fast, the keen, 
 thin, wholesome air, the butterflies and the flowers make 
 the scene beautiful and delightful. You travel on, as 
 yet unrestricted by the property-owner, and enjoy the 
 sensation of stepping and then jumping across a river 
 of note, which will soon defy you to treat it so lightly ; 
 which, ere it reaches the sea, would tax a strong 
 swimmer in the attempt to cross it. Presently, in a 
 
14 
 
 comparatively sheltered nook, you see a forlorn roof, 
 weather-beaten and gloomy, the desolate abode of a 
 shepherd. A hardy, stunted tree or two, a flock of geese 
 and probably a noisy dog, announce the fostering 
 presence of man. 
 
 It is one of the worst traits of the human animal that 
 it cant do without dogs. Of course, a shepherd may be 
 excused ; he probably finds a dog useful, though your 
 Eastern shepherd does very well without one ; but most 
 men keep dogs without such excuse; merely because 
 your dog is a fawning, sycophantic creature, whose 
 sei'\dlity is flattering. The lowest rascal appreciates a 
 dog, but it takes a comparatively high order of intelli- 
 gence to appreciate and enjoy the companionship of a 
 cat ; — that self-contained, self-respecting animal, which, 
 though condescending to associate with man, sometimes 
 even to love him, remains master of his own thoughts, 
 and lives his own life, remote, dignified, inscrutable. I 
 don't say that I go as far as the ancient Egyptians, who 
 worshipped cats, but I am confide at no race can ever be 
 regarded as wholly civilised which tolerates dogs. 
 
 Well, you get a drink of milk (if you are lucky) from 
 the shepherd, who has perhaps been in time lo keep his 
 cur from biting you ; and then you go on by the stream 
 as it meanders through a wide mountain valley, shut in 
 by a great amphitheatre of slopes and cliffs. The bed 
 of the stream seems a misfit, so tiny is the ribbon of 
 water between the great river and ragged banks that tell 
 tales of winter and spring torrents. 
 
 Every now and then a tiny tributary adds its driblet 
 to the main stream, and by the time the latter begins 
 in earnest to set about getting dowTi to a lower level, it 
 has quite a respectable volume of water to send over the 
 inevitable cascades in its path. From the wide valley it 
 enters a narrow defile, at the bottom of which it rattles 
 along with much noise and lashing of boulders, amidst 
 which eveiy now and then there is a deep, quiet amber 
 pool, with great clots of froth circling round and round 
 on the surface, and plenty of trout in the depths. This 
 is a country, and we live in an age, poor in poetry. So 
 the chances are that you will not see a Dryad or a water- 
 nymph combing her tresses by the brim, or floating idly 
 
15 
 
 in the cool and delightful bath. I once met a game- 
 keeper — a wild, poetical-looking gipsy fellow — in a little- 
 frequented part of Shropshire, where in the midst of a 
 little meadow, no bigger than you could throw a stone 
 across, but green and smooth as a lawn, a stream 
 tumbled in a cascade into a clear, delicious pool. A 
 tiny bathing box stood under the trees close to the 
 water. He found me painting by the pool, and I 
 jocularly asked him where the water-nymphs were to be 
 found. " I will show you," he said. He made me come 
 with him through the wood, up to a rocky summit, 
 which commanded a perfect view of the little amphi- 
 theatre. '■ I came here one afternoon last summer," he 
 said, " and sat down on this knoll with my dog to rest 
 and cool, for it was very hot. When I had filled my 
 
 pipe and lit it, I looked down to the meadow, and " 
 
 But, after all, why should I repeat the story? It 
 would be a needless digression. I have unfortunately 
 no means of vouching for its truth ; and, like the Editor 
 of the Wide World MagaziJie, I am very particular upon 
 this point. Perhaps my modern Actaeon was only one 
 of those happy Keats-like souls, for whom the world is 
 all astir with beauty, whose eyes can show them lovely 
 form and colour in all places, for whom white diyads 
 still haunt the twilight mysteiy of the woods, Diana and 
 her sylvan train still go a-hunting in the dewy morning, 
 and the naiads nightly sing to their chorded shells by 
 every river and stream not yet polluted by chemical 
 works and sewage. It was with such vision that my 
 dear friend, the Lost Poet — about whom I am going to 
 write a book some day — at least I like to think I shall — 
 it was with such vision he was endowed, and some 
 such scene he dreamed of when he described — 
 
 A silent pool, where footsteps never come, 
 
 Save when at eve the creatures of the wood 
 
 Steal forth to drink : and in the rosy gloom 
 
 White sportive Dryads gleam npon the marge, 
 
 Or plunge to frolic in its cool, still depths. 
 
 A silent viro^in pool, unkenned by man. 
 
 Hid from the prying world by crriardian trees, 
 
 Its waters pure as when from Heav'n they fell, 
 
 And only mirroring Heaven's depths by day : 
 
 By night the glittering glory of unnumbered stars. 
 
16 
 
 Our mountain torrent now has trees for compaoiy, 
 for the narrow defile offers sufficient shelter. The 
 trackless wastes of the fell-side are exchanged for an 
 ascertainable path, which by imperceptible gradations 
 becomes a regular road. We are now fairly off towards 
 the region of civilisation, though a cottage or two 
 encountered by the way offer little promise of it. The 
 country is still so much the sole projDerty of the sheep 
 that you find them quite at home on the road, and 
 curious, rather than scared, when you encounter them. 
 
 At last the boundaiy of the God Pans dominion is 
 reached. You reach a bridge — the first fetter 
 symbolical of the river's servitude to man — and beside 
 it is a tiny, miserable-looking chapel. It is pretty sure 
 to be a chapel, not a church, for the church dwells 
 content among men in the plains, where souls to be 
 saved, and tithes to be taken, are more plentiful. Only 
 the eager, discordant asceticism of dissent will be at the 
 unremunerative pains of going into such holes and 
 corners of the earth as this. One wonders where the 
 folk come from to use even so tiny a tabernacle. Yet, 
 to a Sabbath preaching, you will see them trooping over 
 the hills, tramping for miles, eager to partake of the rare 
 social joy of crowding together in a vitiated atmosphere ; 
 the charm of contact with ones fellows; — some perhaps 
 glad to listen to what, for them, is inspired speech upon 
 salient problems of life and after life, over which they 
 have pondered thick-wittedly, but earnestly, for many a 
 silent, solitary hour in sheep-walk, wood, field or 
 meadow. 
 
 Gradually the road sheers away from the river. 
 Landlords empale the intervening land, and erect 
 notices to remind you that you may not trespass save 
 under penalties dire and deadly. Tliese notices have 
 their uses, for they generally indicate places worth 
 exploration, and very often are reliable indications of 
 some right of way which the landowner is anxious to 
 suppress. Regarded so, they become benefactions in 
 dissfuise, now that unjustly democratic legislation has 
 restricted the Lord of the Manor from the use of such 
 efficient safeguards as mantraps and spring guns. Not 
 that he is altogether defenceless even now. A very 
 
 I 
 
17 
 
 good effect can be produced by a guardian dog of fiery 
 temperament, or an uncontrollable bull put to graze in 
 the field which a public footpath crosses. I met that 
 bull once in Nottinghamshire, and only won the handi- 
 cap race for the stile by a few inches. He had already 
 gored several people ; but as the path saved two miles 
 or more on the way to the railway station, it was still 
 used. The Lord of the Manor was quite hopeful that 
 when three or four more people had been killed or 
 injured the County Council would awake to a sense of 
 its duty, and buy the field at a fancy price. No one 
 deplored the accidents more than he, for his was a 
 finely strung, sensitive nature, and he marvelled at the 
 rank stupidity which made people mn such a risk for 
 so small an advantage. It is astonishing, when you come 
 to think of it. 
 
 You are not sorry, for man is servant of his appetites, 
 to come to a town just where the river finally gives up 
 the joyousness of childhood, and settles down to the 
 seriousness of married life ; where man, the bridegroom, 
 presents her with a handsome stone arch bridge as 
 wedding ring, and thereafter inflicts on her much 
 degradation and ill-usage. 
 
 Up-river towns are often quaint old-world places, 
 where the tiresome march of what is called civilisation 
 goes forward with comfortably sluggish incompleteness. 
 The railway station is half a mile or more distant, there 
 are no tramways, telephones, electric lights ; one post 
 a day more than sufiices, and a weekly newspaper amply 
 satisfies the need for intelligence of the outside world. 
 Market day is the crowning glory of the week, and the 
 market hall appropriately arrogates to itself the centre 
 of the town — a quaint old place, often with heavy, oak- 
 framed walls, and the greater part of the ground floor 
 commonly an open colonnade. When it is, the male 
 inhabitants in their hours of ease (which seem to be 
 many) will lurk under this cover, like trout beneath a 
 bank, or a hunted cat under a bookcase. The station 
 has advantages ; it averts sunstroke, it commands a near 
 view of several public houses, as well as of anything that 
 may happen to be going on in the town, and the 
 opportunities for conversation are considerable. 
 
18 
 
 If there are any manufactures you will find them 
 nearest the river, whose water-power, wat«r-supply and 
 water-transit occasioned the town being just where it 
 is; and ten to one you will find an important tributaiy 
 joins the main stream just above or below the town. 
 
 The mention of water-transit reminds me that in many 
 pai-ts of the country the facilities afforded by our rivers 
 have been so extensively and ingeniously supplemented 
 by canals that it is, I believe, possible to pass by inland 
 ways from London to Liverpool, or Bristol to Hull with- 
 out once setting foot on land. Before the days of steam, 
 this syst-em of wat-erways must have been of incalculable 
 value. Now, alas, steam and haste have pushed river 
 and canal into the background as highways for traffic, 
 and their wharves are grass-grown and desert-ed. Canals 
 are not so beautiful as rivei^, yet they have certain 
 charms peculiar to themselves, and it is to be placed to 
 their credit in the estimate of a pilgrim in quest of the 
 picturesque, that they are almost always accessible, 
 being provided w^ith a towpath ; w^hile for a consider- 
 ation you may travel upon them in a house-boat, a form 
 of relaxation which I imagine must be delightful. The 
 motion of such a boat, drawn by a patient horse, is 
 perfection, as you may easily ascertain without going to 
 the considerable expense of chartering one, for in places 
 where the prospects of traffic are good, there are omni- 
 bus boats in which a brief but blissful voyage may be 
 made for a few pence. 
 
 At our riverside town we find the church near the 
 watei'side, pretty sure to have some charm of architec- 
 tural or antiquarian interest, unless some idiot rector 
 has had it pulled down and rebuilt in the modern want 
 of taste ; or, worse still, has called in a restorer, and let 
 him work his neo-pseudo-gothic devilries upon the time- 
 hallowed pile. Take them all round, our English 
 country churches are delightful ; far more charming than 
 those of any other land. Their quaint weather-beat-en, 
 ivy-mantled exteriors will always have something choice 
 in fonn or ornament to show you ; and the interiors are 
 very museums of characteristic architectural features ; 
 noble columns, a bit of choice old glass, a carved or 
 vaulted roof, a Saxon font, relic of an earlier fane, a 
 
19 
 
 grotesquely carved pulpit, or monuments quaint and 
 often remarkable, commemorating, perhaps, some utterly 
 forgotten nonentity, whose epitaph tells you that his 
 immort-al greatness can never suffer eclipse; or, per- 
 chance, some great man, whose name it amazes you to 
 find associated with such a dull town. 
 
 If our countiy churches are t-o be preferred to those 
 of the Continent, still more so are their churchyards; 
 even when, as is too often the case, they are neglected 
 and unkempt. There you will find oddly carved head- 
 stones, droll mortuary inscriptions (he is a rare wag, 
 your churchyard poet !), grimly barred graves that 
 remind you of the bad old days of Burke and Hare, 
 venerable yew trees whence our lusty forefathers cut 
 their bows in the picturesque old times ; and almost 
 always some beautiful flowers, the fittest ornament of 
 graves. Of course I don't include enamelled iron 
 wreaths and suchlike horroi-s. I am of the same faith 
 as my friend the Lost Poet. This is what he wrote, 
 under the title 
 
 HIC JACET. 
 
 No monumental stone 
 
 Shall mark our darling's grave. 
 The flow'rs that o'er it wave 
 Suffice to make it known : 
 The feet that thither stray- 
 Need not be shown the way. 
 
 We planted roses there 
 
 And lilies straight and tall. 
 
 That tenderly recall 
 How sweet she was, how fair; 
 Their flow'rs that scattered lie. 
 Like her, too early die. 
 
 When our sad comings cease, 
 No tearless, idle eyes 
 Shall find a carved '' Here Lies " 
 
 Mocking her perfect peace, 
 
 ''Tis best to be forgot 
 
 When Love remembers not. 
 
 \Yhile we linger, our river, inexorable as Time, is 
 rolling on and on, after paying and taking tribute to 
 and from the impartial townsfolk, who probably use it 
 
20 
 
 both as an aqueduct and a sewer, and then wondei' 
 whence their periodical epidemics come. In following 
 it now you must, for the most part, be content with the 
 high road, for we are out of the free hill country. But 
 every now and then you may find a gate unfastened, a 
 gracious road or lane or stile-path that will bring you 
 down to the waterside, and you can take off your knap- 
 sack and sit down in a riverside meadow, or by a ford 
 or a ferry, to listen awhile to the melody of the waters, 
 the rustling voices of the leaves, the singing of birds, 
 the musical buzz of insects and the lowing of cattle — 
 all the innumerable sounds of Nature's symphony ; to 
 which the cloud-frescoed dome of the sky, the flowery 
 meadows, the ample trees, the glittering wavelets and 
 the pui'pling hills contribute infinitely rich orchestral 
 colour. 
 
 Our river soon settles down, how^ever noisily it starts 
 in life, into a sober, decorous, jog-trot progress ; for the 
 course of a river is just like that of human life. The 
 Lost Poet has a poem — too long to quote — in which he 
 pursues the parallel with many curious turns of fancy ; 
 in which the liver, in human semblance, is born of 
 weeping clouds, while old father Earth laughs and sings 
 for joy at the birth. Soon it is dancing with youthful 
 glee like a human child, freakishly playful, impetuous, 
 fascinating. Then presently it is a maiden, pure, 
 beautiful, shy, demure ; gliding swiftly and eagerly on 
 to more fulness of life. Next the poem takes a melan- 
 choly turn, and, after a space, the poet sees the river 
 emerge from the town ; no longer young, pure, happy 
 and free. Contact with that yahoo, man, has had its 
 inevitable result. On and on she goes, ever older and 
 sadder, till at last slowly and sadly through the tedious, 
 dismal, deathlike slime of a salt-marsh, she reaches the 
 everlasting sea, falls willingly into the Nirvana of its 
 embrace, in which all impurities are washed away and 
 from which she is kist heavenward once more, as fresh 
 and pure as when she fii-st came, the gift of Divine Love 
 to Eai-th. 
 
 The idea is, of course, fantastic, but it is pretty enough 
 in poetiy, though my prose outline may seem other\N'ise. 
 One episodical idea I particularly like, is that of com- 
 
21 
 
 paring tributary streams to children who come prattling 
 into our lives, just when we are in danger of losing 
 touch with all that is freshest and best in the world ; 
 and in so coming, bring the influence of their unsullied 
 youth to rejuvenate us. The infinite variety of nature 
 is nowhere better illustrated than by a river's tribu- 
 taries. Trace them up to their sources, and, just as 
 with children, you will never find two quite alike in 
 character. You have to go to other lands to encounter 
 streams that enter the upper world sensationally as 
 geysers, but almost every other variety is to be found 
 in our own. One will come brawling all the way over 
 rocks and boulders, falling with a roar over successive 
 cascades, or rtishing through mighty chasms and past 
 beetling cliffs. The chasm may be the silent record of a 
 pre-historic earthcjuake, or it may be due merely to the 
 amazing power of water — to the Herculean labours 
 performed by it in weaving the exquisite tissues of the 
 Magic Cai-pet. Give it time and it will excavate 
 
 mighty canons many miles in length, and constiTict, 
 leagues away, with the dehri-i, vast expanses of bright 
 flower-gemmed meadows. Nay, that is a mere trifle in 
 the stupendous work done by water on the earth's sur- 
 face, for, aided by sun and frost, it has worn down 
 mighty mountain ranges, and will in time w^ear away 
 and carry to the plains, or on to the ocean depths, the 
 Alps and Himalayas, even as it has already reduced to 
 comparatively trifling height the venerable Cambrian 
 range, one of the most ancient, and once one of the 
 highest mountain systems on the face of the earth. 
 
 When one peeps into the Wonderland opened to the 
 student of geology, it is to find the imagination almost 
 stunned by its revelations. The limestone rocks which 
 a river has been excavating for thousands of years were 
 formed in ocean depths — formed of the remains of 
 minute living creatures, dwellei^s in the sea. Some day, 
 perhaps, millions of years hence, the land may have 
 risen until the river is diverted and its bed is left 
 empty and dry. Still the land will go on rising higher 
 and higher, until at last the remains of the waterwom 
 cliffs are found high and dry on mountain tops, whence 
 sun and frost awid rain Avill once again by gradual 
 
22 
 
 denudation carry them down to the rivei-s and the sea, 
 to begin over again the wonderful cycle of change. 
 
 Another tributaiy of our liver will lead you up to a 
 grim leaden mountain tarn, by whose side there stands, 
 perchance, some pre-historic cross, about whose lichened 
 base bards held their gorsedds, with a solemnity and con- 
 viction that infect you, in spite of their rustic, unbeauti- 
 ful aspect, and the crude simplicity of the ceremonial. 
 
 Yet another stream, springing in a lovely woodland 
 nook, half hidden in ferns and bushes, comes placidly 
 on by meadow and field, lingeiing awhile in reedy pools, 
 and dallying with many a scene of quiet rustic beauty. 
 
 As you travel on by stream and river they will shew 
 you the most intimate secrets of country life. The face 
 of Nature as seen from the river bank is quite unlike 
 the aspect she wears when you look at her from a high 
 road — even if you whirl along it on a coach drawn by 
 six horses, with a coachman in a powdered wig. By the 
 water-side she lets you see all that is in her treasure- 
 house. Eveiy season, every month, every day has its 
 new wonders to delight the eye and ear. The birds 
 sing in the branches overhead, the wild four-footed 
 creatures scuriy to their lairs as you pass, the flowers 
 are ever about you, butterflies gleam on eveiy hand, 
 and you can watch the sleek and spotted trout as they 
 quiver in the clear shallows or with sudden splash spring 
 at their prey. 
 
 By the rivei-side all the pageantiy of all the seasons 
 is enacted for your entertainment, all the real business 
 of mankind, the essential industries of the species, are 
 carried on before you. The ploughman urges his t^ani 
 to prepare the soil for seed, the harrow breaks up the 
 clods left by the ploughshare, and in the cott-age gardens 
 the rustics busily ply Adam's grand old trade. In the 
 spring time, as the poet tells us, a young man's fancy 
 lightly turns t-o thoughts of love, and nowhere is nature 
 more expressively in sympathy with amatoiy dalliance 
 than down in the fresh riverside meadow gemmed with 
 flowers, and musical with the passionat-e calls of mating 
 birds. Now is Corydon's time, and here is his place 
 for pressing his suit on blushing Phyllis. She may be 
 coy and refuse him an answer, but ten to one, when he 
 
23 
 
 has passed on disconsolate and angry, you will see her 
 linger to consult the precious oracle of the marguerite; 
 if necessaiy prepared to control the utterances of fate 
 by plucking two petals at once as she munnurs, " Pie 
 loves me, he loves me not, he loves me!" She knows it 
 must come right, for have they not been lovers since 
 the guileless days of childhood? 
 
 In summer, the time of lusty full-leaved maturity, you 
 see, as you walk by the waterside, the truest wealth of 
 the nation growing towards the harvest, under the 
 benigii influence of rain and sunshine. Already Ihe 
 hay crop is ripe, and in the meadows the swish of scythe 
 and the shaip ring of w^hetstones make pleasant music. 
 Though the season is changed, the young man's fancy 
 (aye, the young maiden's, too) is not; it is ever the 
 season of spring for youth and love. As they stroll 
 homewards from the haytield you may conjecture, if you 
 choose, that the floral oracle has proved true. 
 
 Down in the river you see the cattle standing as deep 
 as they dare in the water, to baffle the flies, and in the 
 gardens the cottagers now look with satisfied pride at 
 their growing crops, or busy themselves with the bees, 
 to which old Hodge will presently play the rapacious 
 landlord. In the woods the thud of axes and the crash 
 of falling giants are heard, and at the feriy we very 
 probably encounter the carcases of some murdered 
 monarchs of the grove on their way to the sawmill. 
 In the orchards the apples and pears are swelling, the 
 cherries are growing red, and the sheep, glad of the 
 leafy shelter, crop the turf and nibble the windfalls, 
 happily unconscious of the more or less near prospect of 
 a journey some day to a market town, whence they will 
 never return, unless it be as mutton. Under the trees, 
 too, you will find the young folk making pleasant 
 pictures, as they pursue the thousand and one delights 
 of childhood, with as much eagerness as elder folk display 
 in the pursuit of aims; too often much less innocent 
 or profitable than those of happy youth. 
 
 The summer days fleet by, and all too soon, as you 
 walk through the meadows, you see the reaper at w^ork, 
 sweeping down with impartial scythe, the flowers and 
 the bearded grain. The blossoms of humanity, quite 
 
24 
 
 regaidless of the embleiiiatical aspect of his peifonnauce, 
 welcome the hai-vest time with delight, as another oppor- 
 tunity of resuming the delights of the hayfield. Their 
 performances add considerably to the share of the field- 
 mice, the ant« and the birds — those humble gleanei^ 
 who fill their stores amply, with the unconsidered grains 
 that even the human gleaners disregard. As swiftly as 
 may be, the sheaves are bound and gathered in, the 
 farmer keeping a nei^vous eye on the barometer and the 
 clouds, and all working with tremendous energy from 
 early morning to dusk, and even under the golden 
 radiance of the harvest moon. Except for sleep, they 
 scarcely leave the fields, gathering under a hedge-row- 
 to devour hastily the meals the fanner's daughters 
 bring to them. 
 
 Then when the last sheaves are garnered, the prepara- 
 tions for coming winter begin. Tlie fields are renewed 
 for the crops of another year, firewood is gathered and 
 stored, and presently the frost and snow come to do their 
 appointed work. And mankind as usual makes the best 
 of things, finding new pleasures on the frozen surface 
 of river and pond, with the aid of skates and curling 
 stones ; while for the young folk there is infinitude of 
 delight in snowballing, sliding, making snow men, and 
 rolling mighty snowballs until their tender muscles 
 creak again under the effort of the last push. 
 
 At all seasons by the waterside, nowadays, you will 
 encounter that aggressive but harmless phenomenon, 
 the peripatetic photographer, or his superior elder 
 brother (very superior in his own estimation) the artist 
 in paint. For each of these, the greatest trouble in the 
 countiy is the juvenile native, who, to the photographer 
 in particular, is endlessly obstructive. The painter can 
 see round him or over him, the camera cannot ; and 
 many are the wiles necessary to circumvent his over- 
 mastering desire to be " took." The solitaiy worker 
 fares worst ; there is safety in numbers. 
 
 Every now and then your stream will bring you to 
 human haunts, and sliow vou a village, or hamlet, or a 
 single cottage nestling picturesquely on its banks ; and 
 they always turn their best face to the waterside. There 
 is infinite variety of charm about these lowly rural 
 
25 
 
 homes, and those that inhabit them ; infinitely pathetic 
 suggestion in the spectacle of an empty, desolate dwel- 
 ling, silently falling to ruins in the midst of a country 
 where the homeless swann in their tens of thousands. 
 It is of interest to notice how the type of dwelling 
 varies in different districts, how it is affected by the 
 nature of the country in which it is built, and also, 
 although less obviously, by the character of the inhabi- 
 tants. In the mountainous districts the type is always 
 more or less severe, which is sufficiently accounted for 
 by the abundance of stone, the scarcity of wood, and th© 
 unfavourable nature of the climate for external display, 
 either architectural or vegetable. In the valleys and 
 plains the presence of timber makes itself felt. I don't 
 know how it is that the rustic architecture of England 
 should almost everywhere be touched with a sense of 
 beauty, remarkable in the edifices of a race by no means 
 distinguished for poetical sensibility. It may be in the 
 people, it may be due to the climate, or, perchance, it 
 is the visible expression of that sentiment so strong in 
 our race, which has its popular expression in the line, 
 " Be it ever so humble there's no place like home !" 
 The beauty, however, is to a great extent a thing of the 
 past. Tlie modern Englishman when he builds, has as 
 his ideal that hideous '^ brick box with a slate lid," 
 which was the particular horror of my fine old friend 
 William Morris. 
 
 Then, too, in your riverside rambles there are all the 
 four-footed sei^ants of man — the aphides of his ant-like 
 industry — to share your observation of inanimate nature. 
 The cattle grazing or chewing the cud in the meadows 
 furaish agreeable notes of colour and fomi to vary the 
 lush sweeps of greenery; agreeable only if there be no 
 ladies of the party. In that case they make a more 
 welcome picture when seen in safety over a five-barred 
 gate that commands the farmyard pond. The sheep, 
 too, are picturesque, and are less likely to give cause of 
 offence, and a herd of Irish nightingales will often supply 
 a little comic relief. That obsolescent quadruped, which 
 will soon be represented only in museums and remem- 
 bered by etymologists because its name is used in 
 indicating the power of various sorts of traction engines, 
 
26 
 
 is still the most picturesque object of our fields and 
 roads — a noble and beautiful creature, although it has 
 the fatal drawback of not drawing its motive force from 
 a benzine tank. 
 
 I dare not linger any longer, or I might go on with 
 a pertinacity equal to that of Tennyson's " Brook." 
 The way is long, the shadow of twilight is at hand, and 
 we must hasten onward, not pausing even to watch the 
 evening romps of the young folk on the village green, 
 but with single heart addressing ourselves to the tedious, 
 toilsome road. Yet at least in this fair land of ours it 
 is sure to lead us by many scenes of rare beauty ; and, 
 as the shadows lengthen and our feet grow weary, nature 
 helps us along by growing more and more lovely, with a 
 beauty still beyond the scope of photography. And if 
 the night fall before the goal is reached, we are com- 
 pensated by new wonders of loveliness as we toil onwards 
 under the silvern glitter of the moon ; or, looking 
 upwards, see with reverent delight " The million-lilied 
 sti;eam of night, Wide in ethereal meadows flow." 
 
 The river as it widens and deepens still opens up new 
 scenes to delight us. In one place we find it roaring 
 down impassable rapids in which no boat could live a 
 moment: a manifestation of Nature's power, which 
 reaches its most awe-compelling expression in the famous 
 Niagara rapids. Presently all is calm again, and the 
 river glides smoothly under an exquisite canopy of 
 foliage, past flowery meadows or antiquated waterside 
 gardens, down whose worn and weather-stained stairways 
 one would not be surprised to see the melancholy 
 Mariana pace, on suicide intent. Anon we come to a 
 venerable castle, stately relic of a byegone time, whose 
 grim old keep becomes a thing of beauty when mirrored 
 on the glassy surface of the water. Lordly mansions 
 lie far back from the river's verge, nestling among 
 sheltering trees, and set in parks full of cunningly 
 ordered beauty of form and colour, where the proud 
 peacock struts, and the trim greensward is varied with 
 spaces untrimmed and unshorn, whose greenery is 
 gemmed with the starry blossoms of ox-daisies and other 
 wild flowers. Sometimes, especially near the towns, the 
 mansions ajid villas are close to th© margin of tho water, 
 
27 
 
 and look delightfully snug and rheumatic. Of course, 
 you come to other towns; for our towns are strung like 
 beads upon the rivers — the beads sometimes very inferior 
 to the string. Sometimes it will be a walled city with 
 a museum, Roman remains, and all that sort of thing 
 so dear to Mr. Pickwick ; sometimes a garrison town 
 full of redcoats and petticoats; sometimes a cathedral 
 town full of black coats, and, yes, there are petticoats 
 there, too ! Sometimes you mil have all three delight- 
 fully rolled into one. 
 
 We have dallied so long by rivers and streams that 
 there is little space left in which to refer to those ponds, 
 lakes and tarns: all the quiet spaces of water that ever 
 and anon diversify the courses of rivers, and which the 
 Lost Poet prettily compares to those quiet hajDpy inter- 
 vals of rest and enjoyment that now and then come to 
 vary the sordid hurry of life. There is the less need to 
 enlarge on the subject, because we are all much more 
 familiar with lakes than with rivers. The tourist people 
 even run cheap excursions to them, and the tripper 
 goes in his thousands and tens of thousands. This is 
 comprehensible enough ; not only are lakes so large that 
 even the feeblest aesthetic sense can scarcely fail to be 
 impressed, but their size prohibits the land monopolist 
 from shutting out his humbler fellows. 
 
 I am conscious, too, that but little has been said of 
 the stem season of winter, when water undergoes 
 wondrous transformations, when river and pond and lake 
 become as sheets of glass, and, instead of the swallows, 
 that have fled to sunnier regions, agile skaters skim over 
 the surface, and the dews are changed into silver filigree 
 and glistening jewels that make bare boughs and 
 withered leaves beautiful again for a little while with a 
 strange death-like beauty, beyond summer's utmost 
 charm. This is the season when water does some of its 
 most wonderful work — breaking up the clods and renew- 
 ing the soil, to receive and nourish the crops of the 
 coming year, cleaving the rocks with irresistible power, 
 and at times even binding the sea in its fetters. Then, 
 even the mighty estuary, where at last the river meets 
 the sea, is covered with hideous masses of ice, among 
 which the starving gulls hunt eagerly for the garbage 
 
28 
 
 of the town, and through which sturdy vessels only force 
 their way amid difficulty and danger. 
 
 To see the season of winter in all it^ glory we must 
 go to other lands, where the climatic conditions of a 
 great continent, or the rigours of arctic latitudes, pro- 
 duce mai-vels of snow and ice quit« impossible in our 
 equable climate: a climate, by the way, which we must 
 not forget is pleasant to live in, very largely because our 
 islands lie near that great oceanic river, the Gulf Stream, 
 whose mighty current carries tropical wannth far into 
 the Northern Seas, and shields us effectually from the 
 assaults of arctic icebergs and frosts. The rivers of the 
 ocean are mightier and even more wonderful than those 
 of the land, and I would I could do more than pay them 
 the scant tribute of a remark in passing. Wonderful, 
 too, are those solid rivers of the Arctic and Antarctic 
 circles, which carry down the eternal snow and ice of the 
 inscrutable polar regions to the ocean, and discharge 
 great bergs to float sullenly forth in search of dissolution. 
 In all parts of the world the same phenomena are dis- 
 played on a smaller scale in the upper regions of high 
 mountains; as, for instance, in the Alps, where from the 
 zone of eternal snow, there flow down to the valleys, 
 rivers of ice, such as at some remote epoch bound our 
 own bright, genial and populous land in the silence of 
 death and desolation. 
 
 Ordinary rivers under the influence of a low tempera- 
 ture, often present sufficiently remarkable appearances; 
 so remarkable, indeed, that but for the evidence of 
 photography we would scarcely be able to grasp any 
 conception of them. On the continent of America, 
 where, in our own latitude, the winter frosts are terribly 
 severe, the rivers are for months imprisoned under ice, 
 and at Niagara the most fantastic eccentricities of foim 
 are to be found. Ice is piled in heaps so immense that 
 one exploring them might fancy himself lost in a fairy 
 palace of crystal full of jewelled caves, infinitely beauti- 
 ful. Pictures of them make one think of that strangely 
 fascinating, dream-inspired fragment by Coleridge, in 
 which 
 
 Alph, the sacred river, ran, 
 
 Through caverns measureless by man, 
 
 Down to a sunless sea. 
 
29 
 
 The prototype in fact of that river, however, would 
 rather be one of those curious subterranean waterways 
 occasionally found in cretaceous rock formations. 
 
 The intimate relation between our rivers and the 
 clouds, upon which I have already touched, has a 
 curious illustration in occasional winter formations on 
 the banks of Niagara, of which I have seen pictures; 
 in which the characteristic forais of cumulus clouds are 
 imitated veiy closely by the frozen spray of the cataract. 
 This phenomenon reminds us that in the opinion of 
 meteorologists, all the higher strata of clouds, especially 
 the cirrhus, consist of fine needles of ice. 
 
 Wonderfully beautiful are the phenomena of winter; 
 yet there are few that desire its coming or regret its 
 departure. We are all devout sun-worshippers at heart, 
 like our ancient ancestors, Druid or otherwise, whose 
 Cyclopean sun-temples are their only memorials; and it 
 is with heartfelt joy that we feel the warm kisses of the 
 west wind, before which the frost vanishes when the 
 season of death passes, and the new springtime appears 
 gloriously on earth, breathing fresh life into all things. 
 Once more, in the world "s round of change, life and hope 
 and gladness are in the air. The past is lost in the 
 ocean of Time, even as the waters of our rivers fall into 
 the sea and are swallowed up ; but it is not annihilation, 
 only a stage in the inevitable universal law of rotation, 
 in virtue of which the life of this globe continues from 
 age to age. The shores of the ocean of Time are ever- 
 more strewn with the wreckage of life, yet ever, as we 
 wander sadly amid the mournful debris, we shall find, 
 if we look aright, the reassuring emblem of Hope. Our 
 friend was in a pessimistic vein when this image 
 presented itself to his mind, and he wrote : — 
 
 As by Time's sullen sea I went, 
 
 I wept the wrecks that strewed the strand ; 
 
 My heart was sore with discontent 
 That life had been so badly planned ; 
 
 Though short, so dark, so full of pain, 
 
 That none would crave it o'er again. 
 
 " Ah, friend," the Optimist replied, 
 
 " Look up, be cheered, it's wrong to mope : 
 
 " Amid the wrecks that mark the tide 
 " Behold the emblem of Sweet Hope." 
 
 I turned to look — 'twas there, ah, yes ! 
 
 But rusted, broken, valueless ! 
 
30 
 
 It would be unkind to say farewell to our Baid while 
 he is in this minor key, and I will venture on one more 
 quotation — a brief one — which will fittingly conclude 
 our desultory ramble by the rivers he loved so well. It 
 is from the introduction to his poem entitled " A vision 
 of the Gods," in which Pan, the embodiment of Nature, 
 sits by the river of Time, and watches all the strange 
 gods of man's intellectual infancy, " All the barbaric 
 Pantheon of all savage ages and nations '' pass before 
 him, and vanish with the coming dawn. 
 
 Down on the verge of the river, the river of Time the eternal. 
 Once, in a dream, as I wandered, it seemed the new morning was 
 
 breaking. 
 Far in the darkness to eastward, a glimmer of greyness was 
 
 trembling. 
 The face of the water was ruflfled, the sedges awoke with a shiver; 
 There I saw Pan, the immortal, in silence, alone, in the darkness, 
 Throned on a bank by the margin, embowered in rushes and 
 
 reed-stems. 
 Silent he sat in the darkness, sat long and gazed over the river. 
 Smiled as he watched its dark waters that on to the westward 
 
 swift hurried, 
 Smiled with a face full of sadness, then turned to the east, to 
 
 the dawning. 
 Took up the pipes that lay by liim, and prest his lips deftly 
 
 along them. 
 Lo ! through the silence there sounded faint mystical murmurs 
 
 of music, 
 Music more subtly entrancing tlian any that mortal has uttered. 
 Music so perfect in cadence that few are the ears which can 
 
 hear it. 
 Deaf the gross ears of the trader, grown dull with tlie jangle of 
 
 guineas, 
 Deaf all that worship in temples, and list to the droning of 
 
 praises, 
 Deaf all save only the Poet, who hears the sweet notes of his 
 
 master: 
 Pan, the unborn, the undying; alone among Gods the Immortal. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
nr^ o. tO r^r} /