d the young couple by leaving his
granddaughter four thousand pounds when he died.

The mill-tail is used as a thoroughfare, up which the hay is carted,
from the meadows on the opposite bank of the river, a shallow and stony
bedded back-water meeting it at its junction with the main stream. Down
this back-water in July the heavy cart-horses drag the sweet-scented
haywains knee deep and axle deep in water, leaving feathery wisps of hay
hanging from the willows, and clinging to the tall rushes upon either
hand, the waggoner bravely astride the leader, while haymakers and
children are seated on top of the load, not a little nervous in
mid-stream, and clinging tightly when the horses are struggling up the
deep ascent into the stack-yard.

A contrast, indeed, is the bustle of the hay-making with the splash of
the teams and the merry voices of the children to the solitude which
reigns supreme in this silent, currentless backwater during the rest of
the year. Winding between the long flat meadows away from the traffic of
the river it becomes in early summer a veritable museum of aquatic
plants: lilies choke its passage, and the ancient gates, giving access
to the adjoining fields, lie lost in creamy meadow-sweet, their sodden
and decaying posts wreathed in sweet forget-me-nots, while sword-like
rushes rear their points till they part the grey-green willow leaves
above. The silence would become oppressive were it not for an indistinct
murmur from the working world, which forms a fitful background to the
prevailing stillness; the distant roar of a train as it rushes on its
journey to the palpitating heart of London, the faint sound of a mowing
machine in the meadows, or the crack of a whip up the tow-path as a
barge moves up to the primitive lock, add a touch of human interest
without disturbing the sense of restfulness from the eager hurry of
Nineteenth Century existence....

Constable's country may be said to extend along the Stour valley,
anywhere within walking distance of his home, Neyland, Stoke, Langham,
Stratford, and in the opposite direction, Harwich, all having furnished
material for his fruitful pencil. But, despite much admirable work done
in each of these places, it was to the few acres of river and meadow
round the old mill at Flatford that he owed his first awakening to the
wonders of nature around him. To these, his first and truest masters,
his memory was ever turning for inspiration; and during the life-long