ontrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the aspects of nature
any more clement than the doings of the sky. For we passed through a
stretch of blighted country, sparsely covered with brush, but handsomely
enough diversified with factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow
among some pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather.
But the wind blew so hard, we could get little else to smoke. There were
no natural objects in the neighbourhood, but some sordid workshops. A
group of children headed by a tall girl stood and watched us from a
little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder what they
thought of us.

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing-place being
steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. Near a dozen grimy
workmen lent us a hand. They refused any reward; and, what is much
better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any sense of insult.
"It is a way we have in our countryside," said they. And a very
becoming way it is. In Scotland, where also you will get services for
nothing, the good people reject your money as if you had been trying to
corrupt a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it
is worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be common
to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, where we plod
threescore years and ten in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our
ears from birth to burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand, and
almost offensively; and make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act
of war against the wrong.

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went down; and a
little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and through a delectable
land. The river wound among low hills, so that sometimes the sun was at
our backs, and sometimes it stood right ahead, and the river before us
was one sheet of intolerable glory. On either hand, meadows and orchards
bordered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. The
hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms;
and the fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series of
bowers along the stream. There was never any prospect; sometimes a
hill-top with its trees would look over the nearest hedgerow, just to
make a middle distance for the sky; but that was all. The heaven was
bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting
purity. The river doubled among the hil