of the nineteenth century," were no longer intellectual, but had once
again become as beautiful as they should be, and the little hill of
Hinksey, with two or three very pretty stone houses new-grown on it
(I use the word advisedly; for they seemed to belong to it) looked
down happily on the full streams and waving grass, grey now, but for
the sunset, with its fast-ripening seeds.

The railway having disappeared, and therewith the various level
bridges over the streams of Thames, we were soon through Medley Lock
and in the wide water that washes Port Meadow, with its numerous
population of geese nowise diminished; and I thought with interest
how its name and use had survived from the older imperfect communal
period, through the time of the confused struggle and tyranny of the
rights of property, into the present rest and happiness of complete
Communism.

I was taken ashore again at Godstow, to see the remains of the old
nunnery, pretty nearly in the same condition as I had remembered
them; and from the high bridge over the cut close by, I could see,
even in the twilight, how beautiful the little village with its grey
stone houses had become; for we had now come into the stone-country,
in which every house must be either built, walls and roof, of grey
stone or be a blot on the landscape.

We still rowed on after this, Ellen taking the sculls in my boat; we
passed a weir a little higher up, and about three miles beyond it
came by moonlight again to a little town, where we slept at a house
thinly inhabited, as its folk were mostly tented in the hay-fields.