so much. But they only add perplexity to the anomaly, which was already
sufficiently trying with its contrasts of splendor and shabbiness, and
such intimate association of velvets and patches as you see in the
churches of Catholic countries, but nowhere else in the world except in
our "coaches of the sovereign people."

In winter, the journey to or from Boston cannot appear otherwise than very
dreary to the fondest imagination. Coming out, nothing can look more
arctic and forlorn than the river, double-shrouded in ice and snow, or
sadder than the contrast offered to the same prospect in summer. Then all
is laughing, and it is a joy in every nerve to ride out over the Long
Bridge at high tide, and, looking southward, to see the wide crinkle and
glitter of that beautiful expanse of water, which laps on one hand the
granite quays of the city, and on the other washes among the reeds and
wild grasses of the salt-meadows. A ship coming slowly up the channel, or
a dingy tug violently darting athwart it, gives an additional pleasure to
the eye, and adds something dreamy or vivid to the beauty of the scene. It
is hard to say at what hour of the summer's-day the prospect is loveliest;
and I am certainly not going to speak of the sunset as the least of its
delights. When this exquisite spectacle is presented, the horse-car
passenger, happy to cling with one foot to the rear platform-steps, looks
out over the shoulder next him into fairy-land. Crimson and purple the bay
stretches westward till its waves darken into the grassy levels, where,
here and there, a hay-rick shows perfectly black against the light. Afar
off, southeastward and westward, the uplands wear a tinge of tenderest
blue; and in the nearer distance, on the low shores of the river, hover
the white plumes of arriving and departing trains. The windows of the
stately houses that overlook the water take the sunset from it
evanescently, and begin to chill and darken before the crimson burns out
of the sky. The windows are, in fact, best after nightfall, when they are