they thought of this, they both
declared that it was the very thing they were at the point of advising,
which, however, they had forborne from doing because I never took
advice. At this, as being such a great exaggeration, I could not help
smiling seriously; but I could not accept their sage opinion that,
before I went to see my kinsman, I ought to write and ask his leave to
do so. For that would have made it quite a rude thing to call, as I
must still have done, if he should decline beforehand to receive me.
Moreover, it would look as if I sought an invitation, while only wanting
an interview. Therefore, being now full of money again, I hired the
flyman who had made us taste the water, and taking train at Newport, and
changing at two or three places as ordered, crossed many little streams,
and came to a fair river, which proved to be the Thames itself, a few
miles above Reading.

In spite of all the larger lessons of travel, adventure, and
tribulation, my heart was throbbing with some rather small feelings, as
for the first time I drew near to the home of my forefathers. I should
have been sorry to find it ugly or mean, or lying in a hole, or even
modern or insignificant; and when none of these charges could be brought
against it, I was filled with highly discreditable pain that Providence
had not seen fit to issue me into this world in the masculine form; in
which case this fine property would, according to the rules of mankind,
have been mine. However, I was very soon ashamed of such ideas, and sat
down on a bank to dispel them with the free and fair view around me.

The builder of that house knew well both where to place and how to shape
it, so as not to spoil the site. It stood near the brow of a bosoming
hill, which sheltered it, both with wood and clevice, from the rigor
and fury of the north and east; while in front the sloping foreground
widened its soft lap of green. In bays and waves of rolling grass,
promontoried, here and there, by jutting copse or massive tree, and
jotted now and then with cattle as calm as boats at anchor, the range
of sunny upland fell to the reedy fringe and clustered silence of deep
river meadows. Here the Thames, in pleasant bends of gentleness and
courtesy, yet with will of its own ways, being now a plenteous river,
spreads low music, and holds mirror to the woods and hills and fields,
casting afar a broad still gleam, and on the banks presenting tremulous
infinitude of flash.

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