a great church when there are no benches on the floor to
shorten them. The clouds come upon the south-west wind of the early year,
a little cold with the strength of freshness, and not with chill, and give
and withhold a hundred lights.

Those who do not like the name of mud should see how these lights are
answered by the floor of mud in simple silver and steel. Twice a day the
motion of the wave is there, twice a day the still shore. With that
cradling change go the changes of the boats and barges at the wharves. All
is life, but there is no colour, except where you very dimly perceive that
a sail is red as the sails are on the Adriatic. It is a view to teach
painting, to teach seeing. We have not such another school in London as
Chelsea Reach. If Chelsea ever becomes _grande ville_ too, the shape of
the river will be altered, and the profile of that curve, sharp and fine
with masts against the west will be abolished: there will be no beauty of
tides, no silver wet mirror, no barges.

There is nothing quite like Chelsea. The spoiling of Chelsea will not be
the same thing as the spoiling of the country by pushing on a suburb, for
instance; for in that case there is country beyond, only deferred. But
there is no Cheyne Walk, no Chelsea, further up the river, or anywhere in
the world of rivers.

[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S AT DAWN.]

[Illustration: _The Last Boat._]

THE SPRING

There is a splendid spring in town, and it happens to agree with the
country spring as to the time of appearing; but it is another show, and of
another spirit. The difference is curiously complete; it was, no doubt, to
be looked for in the avenues, in the sward, in the winding water, and in
the Park generally, considered as a landscape. But how is the grass itself
London grass? Not only in its acre of intense green, but in the space of a
square foot that might, one would think, be anywhere, it is London grass.
The leaves, the blades, are London growth. You cannot evade the spirit of
place by shutting out the sky, the railings, the people, or the gravel.
Even if you go close and make acquaintance, as a child does, with the
roots, you are aware that it is not the grass of England that you have
there, but the grass of London.

The leaves of the trees have so vulgar a contrast in the black of stems,
branches, and twigs, that they are from the first obviously not the leaves
of the woods. They are all the better admired by many eye