ntaining but a few inches of water--that their beds had
been hollowed out to get marl or gravel for the convenience of the
neighboring cultivators.

Be this as it may, they were at all times brimful of the clearest and
most transparent water I ever remember to have seen--never turbid even
after the heaviest rains; and though bordered by water-flags, and
tapestried in many places by the broad, round leaves of the white and
yellow water-lilies, never corrupted by a particle of floating scum,
or green duckweed.

Whether they were fed by secret springs I know not; or whether they
communicated by sluices or side-drains with the neighboring Thames; I
never could discover any current or motion in their still, glassy
waters, though I have wandered by their banks a hundred times,
watching the red-finned roach and silvery dace pursue each other among
the shadowy lily leaves, now startling a fat yellow frog from the
marge, and following him as he dived through the limpid blackness to
the very bottom, now starting in my own turn, as a big water-rat would
swim from side to side, and vanish in some hole of the marly bank, and
now endeavoring to catch the great azure-bodied, gauze-winged
dragon-flies, as they shot to and fro on their poised wings, pursuing
kites of the insect race, some of the smaller ephemera.

It was those quiet, lucid waters, coupled with the exceeding shadiness
of the trees, and its very unusual solitude--I have walked it, I
suppose, from end to end at least a hundred times, and I never
remember to have met so much even as a peasant returning from his
daily labor, or a country maiden tripping to the neighboring
town--that gave its character, and I will add, its charm to this half
pastoral, half sylvan lane. For nearly three miles it ran in one
direction, although, as I have said, with many devious turns, and
seemingly unnecessary angles, and through that length it did not pass
within the sound of one farm-yard, or the sight of one cottage
chimney. But to make up for this, of which it was, indeed, a
consequence, the nightingales were so bold and familiar that they
might be heard all day long filling the air with their delicious
melodies, not waiting, as in more frequented spots, the approach of
night, whose dull ear to charm with amorous ravishment; nay, I have
seen them perched in full view on the branches, gazing about them
fearless with their full black eyes, and swelling their emulous
throats in full view o