pull the buildings down, since they were there; just as with the
buildings of the Dung-Market. You know, of course, that it was the
palace of our old mediaeval kings, and was used later on for the same
purpose by the parliamentary commercial sham-kings, as my old kinsman
calls them."

"Yes," said I, "I know all that. What is it used for now?"

"A great many people live there," said he, "as, with all drawbacks, it is
a pleasant place; there is also a well-arranged store of antiquities of
various kinds that have seemed worth keeping--a museum, it would have
been called in the times you understand so well."

I drew my sculls through the water at that last word, and pulled as if I
were fleeing from those times which I understood so well; and we were
soon going up the once sorely be-cockneyed reaches of the river about
Maidenhead, which now looked as pleasant and enjoyable as the up-river
reaches.

The morning was now getting on, the morning of a jewel of a summer day;
one of those days which, if they were commoner in these islands, would
make our climate the best of all climates, without dispute. A light wind
blew from the west; the little clouds that had arisen at about our
breakfast time had seemed to get higher and higher in the heavens; and in
spite of the burning sun we no more longed for rain than we feared it.
Burning as the sun was, there was a fresh feeling in the air that almost
set us a-longing for the rest of the hot afternoon, and the stretch of
blossoming wheat seen from the shadow of the boughs. No one unburdened
with very heavy anxieties could have felt otherwise than happy that
morning: and it must be said that whatever anxieties might lie beneath
the surface of things, we didn't seem to come across any of them.

We passed by several fields where haymaking was going on, but Dick, and
especially Clara, were so jealous of our up-river festival that they
would not allow me to have much to say to them. I could only notice that
the people in the fields looked strong and handsome, both men and women,
and that so far from there being any appearance of sordidness about their
attire, they seemed to be dressed specially for the occasion,--lightly,
of course, but gaily and with plenty of adornment.

Both on this day as well as yesterday we had, as you may think, met and
passed and been passed by many craft of one kind and another. The most
part of these were being rowed like ourselves, or were sailing, in t