to it, and finished by roaring out very loud, and
damning all the rest for fools; after which befel a period of noise, and
then a lull, during which the aforesaid section, having said good-night
very amicably, took his way home by himself to a western suburb, using
the means of travelling which civilisation has forced upon us like a
habit. As he sat in that vapour-bath of hurried and discontented
humanity, a carriage of the underground railway, he, like others, stewed
discontentedly, while in self-reproachful mood he turned over the many
excellent and conclusive arguments which, though they lay at his fingers'
ends, he had forgotten in the just past discussion. But this frame of
mind he was so used to, that it didn't last him long, and after a brief
discomfort, caused by disgust with himself for having lost his temper
(which he was also well used to), he found himself musing on the subject-
matter of discussion, but still discontentedly and unhappily. "If I
could but see a day of it," he said to himself; "if I could but see it!"

As he formed the words, the train stopped at his station, five minutes'
walk from his own house, which stood on the banks of the Thames, a little
way above an ugly suspension bridge. He went out of the station, still
discontented and unhappy, muttering "If I could but see it! if I could
but see it!" but had not gone many steps towards the river before (says
our friend who tells the story) all that discontent and trouble seemed to
slip off him.

It was a beautiful night of early winter, the air just sharp enough to be
refreshing after the hot room and the stinking railway carriage. The
wind, which had lately turned a point or two north of west, had blown the
sky clear of all cloud save a light fleck or two which went swiftly down
the heavens. There was a young moon halfway up the sky, and as the home-
farer caught sight of it, tangled in the branches of a tall old elm, he
could scarce bring to his mind the shabby London suburb where he was, and
he felt as if he were in a pleasant country place--pleasanter, indeed,
than the deep country was as he had known it.

He came right down to the river-side, and lingered a little, looking over
the low wall to note the moonlit river, near upon high water, go swirling
and glittering up to Chiswick Eyot: as for the ugly bridge below, he did
not notice it or think of it, except when for a moment (says our friend)
it struck him that he missed the row of