the natural world dropped into
the midst of the May of London? A scrap of that true spring alighted in
the midst of the very winter would hardly look so strange as this shred of
the very spring in the spring of town. It is but some accidental grass or
leaf that has been shed and sown by some west wind upon the edges of the
tiles of a little old poor roof in town. Not into the parks did it fly,
not amongst the flower-walks or on the great sward, emerald green. It
hovered and flitted into the middle of town, a little flock of wild lives.
The enormous spring, the May of all the earth, unmarked, disguised by a
delusive likeness to the London spring, has visited the town. It is a
dainty _incognito_. It signals to those who know; but if Vestries
recognised it--and supposing they cared enough for roofs of that kind,
which they do not--they would take that grass up by the roots.

BELOW BRIDGE

The first impression, and, needless to say, the longest, is that of the
many miles of wharves compared with the few miles of embankments, drives,
and of the holiday river generally. Not only have the black and brown
warehouses, the chimneys, and the cranes possession of the whole right
bank of the London Thames, but they hold both banks of the lower Thames
through league-long reaches and noble curves, and such changes of aspect,
sky, and direction as renew the scene by the rule of the sky.

[Illustration: _Below Bridge._]

Besides this slow variation of light, in which the view wheels under the
wheeling cloud, there is no lack of variety along the dusky banks of the
river of commerce. The subsidence of height along the warehouses as the
river draws further and further from the middle of London is an incident
of continuous interest, interrupted now and then, but holding on
persistently, until the carrying river flows through a dark-gabled, low,
and long village towards the eastern woods and heights and the further
fields.

[Illustration: BELOW BRIDGE.]

Of really old buildings, wooden and small, and in any conventional sense
interesting, there is little indeed, but such as it is it takes the eye
instantly. Looking along the swarthy, unequal frontage of brick houses
that are no houses--somewhat as the _biblia abiblia_ of Charles Lamb are
among books,--you find the face of a single human little house, its timber
looking old, delicate, and pale among the bricks; a Limehouse
harbour-master's title is written across the fa