r and we got
aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died away. The rest of the
journey to Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the unfavouring
air; and with now and then a puff, and now and then a spell of paddling,
drifted along from lock to lock, between the orderly trees.

It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green water-lane,
going on from village to village. Things had a settled look, as in
places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon us from the bridges
as we went below, with a true conservative feeling. But even more
conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go
by without one glance. They perched upon sterlings and buttresses and
along the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were
indifferent, like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any more than
if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered,
the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches
established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent
heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their
skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber
stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do
dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and
a day, by still and depopulated waters.

At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress who
spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple of
leagues from Brussels. At the same place the rain began again. It fell
in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal was thrown up
into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There were no beds to be
had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and
address ourselves to steady paddling in the rain.

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered
windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a rich
and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the shores of
the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same effect in
engravings: opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung with the passage
of storm. And throughout we had the escort of a hooded cart, which
trotted shabbily along the tow-path, and kept at an almost uniform
distance in our wake.

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE

The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air was