A little later in the morning you may meet a few gyps and bedmakers
coming round chance corners, or descending mysterious stairs; but if
you go beyond inhabited precincts, down to the river-side, you are
almost sure to be quite alone; you may stand, as Christian was
accustomed to do, on any one of the bridges which connect the college
buildings and college grounds, and see nothing but the little robin
hopping about and impressing tiny footprints after yours in the path,
then flying on to the branches of the nearest willow, which, heavy with
a weight that is not leaves, but snow, dips silently into the silenced
water.

Or you may gaze, as Christian gazed every morning with continually
new wonder, at the colors of the dawn brightening into sunrise, such as
it looks on a winter's morning--so beautiful that it seems an almost
equal marvel that nobody should care to see it but yourself, except
perhaps a solitary gownsman, a reading man, taking his usual
constitutional just as a matter of duty, but apparently not enjoying it the
least in the world.

Not enjoying it--the sharp fresh air, which braces every nerve, and
invigorates every limb, causing all the senses to awake and share, as it
were, this daily waking up of Nature, fresh as a rose? For what
rosiness, in the brightest summer days, can compare with that kiss of
the winter's sun on the tree-tops, slowly creeping down their trunks and
branches? And what blueness, even of a June sky, can equal that sea of
space up aloft, across which, instead of shadows and stars, pink and
lilac morning clouds are beginning to sail, clearer and brighter every
minute? As they have sailed for the last four centuries over the
pinnacle of that wondrous chapel, which has been described in guide-
books, and pictured in engravings to an overwhelming extent, yet is