r various
landing-places, and the names of the owners of warehouses are broad across
their fronts; or you are reminded how little you know of the affairs of
the place by the frequent name of 'Sufferance Wharf' among the cranes. It
cannot possibly be said that this lettering is beautiful, but it is not
nearly so bad as the lettering in the streets we know. Needless to say,
you shall not see a scrap of gilding below bridge, except a momentary
tawdriness near the pier of some excursion place, where there are unseen
Cockney gardens at hand--no gilding, nor white, nor any kind of blue.
Seeing that bad blue is the worst thing in the far-off town of paint and
pleasure, the dark and reddish river-side of work has here again one of
its obscure advantages.

[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S FROM WATLING STREET.]

The work, almost all pausing in this summer Sunday, is obviously, to
judge by its instruments and chips, mainly the inhuman work of machines.
Nevertheless, wherever there are boats there is that arm of Hercules which
is heroic, and therefore greater, though much weaker, than the arm of
iron; and even on this day you may see the toil of the arm against the
mass of the heavy river, as two men stand to row their broad barge up
stream. It is the most primitive contest after all. Their figures strain
back on the long oar until they are stretched nearly straight horizontally
before they slowly gather themselves and grow erect again. Nothing suits
the river so well as the barge with its level load, flat as the water
itself. Nothing a-tiptoe there; but the very surface of the world reaching
to the sea, and the long river feeling for that level far inland.

The dusky voyage darkens, for the Thames turns towards the north; anon it
takes a pale grey splendour, the sky shines, and the delicate intricacy of
masts that mar nothing of the simple view seems to be rather itself
luminous than dark against the light; flying birds are lost as they pass
in the upper brilliance. It is but that the Thames has swung towards the
south again.

THE ROADS

On Westminster Bridge at early morning Wordsworth thought of the heart of
London, but a view of London in the long day and night of movement, when
the mystery of sleep is away, suggests not the involuntary heart of men,
but their wilful feet. The roads, which are lonely messengers in the
far-off country, crowd together here, and hustle one another to give
footing to the tramp of the peop