in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton of the
world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The slopes were
steep and changeful. Oak-trees clung along the hills, well grown,
wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with strong and luminous
colours. Here and there another stream would fall in from the right or
the left, down a gorge of snow-white and tumultuary boulders. The river
in the bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all
hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed a while in desperate rapids,
and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green shot with watery
browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so changeful
and delicate a hue; crystal was not more clear, the meadows were not by
half so green; and at every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be
out of these hot, dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body
in the mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never forgot
it was the Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and I heard
in spirit the church-bells clamouring all over Europe, and the psalms of
a thousand churches.

At length a human sound struck upon my ear--a cry strangely modulated
between pathos and derision; and looking across the valley, I saw a
little urchin sitting in a meadow, with his hands about his knees, and
dwarfed to almost comical smallness by the distance. But the rogue had
picked me out as I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood,
driving Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country in
this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are lovely and
natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming through so much clean
hill air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear,
and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river.

A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn at