d ground with homely vegetables. Here stood a mysterious
ancient building, which proved on examination to contain nothing but a
gushing well of water. Here was a lawn with a trim gravel walk bordered
with roses; while a few paces away was a deserted thicket of sprawling
shrubs, elders, and laurels, with a bit of wild rough meadow in the
heart of the copse; and here was a sight that nearly brought me to my
knees. Beside an ancient wall, with the towers and gables of the
Cathedral looking solemnly over, a great spring broke up out of the
ground from some secret channel into a little pool surrounded by rich
water plants, and flowed away in a full channel; not one, but three of
these astonishing fountains were to be seen in this little space of
grass and copse.

These are the Wells themselves, the _Aquae Solis_, as the Romans called
them, fed by some hidden channel from the hills, sent gushing up day
and night for the delight and refreshment of men. I wish that the
mediaeval builders had built the great church over instead of near
these wells, and had let them burst up in a special chapel, so that the
church might have been musical with the sound of streams; and so that
the waters might have flowed from the door of the house, as Ezekiel saw
them flow eastward from the threshold of the holy habitation to Engedi
and Eneglaim to gladden the earth.

Then as I wandered in a place of dark leaves, beside the moat under the
frowning towers, I saw a kingfisher sit on a bough, his back powdered
with sapphires, his red breast, his wise head on one side, watching the
stream. In a moment he plunged and disappeared; in an instant he was
back again on his perch, flashing, like Excalibur, over the stream, his
prey in his bill.

For a long morning I wandered about, dizzied with beauty, gazing,
wondering, desiring I knew not what.

Then came the strange thought that this place of dreamful beauty should
be in the hands of a few simple ecclesiastical persons; the town is
little more than a village; century by century it has lived a little,
quiet provincial life. It has produced, so far as I know, no great man.
This soft air, this humid climate, sheltered from the wind, full of
warm sunlight, fed with dew, seems favourable to a long, comfortable,
indolent life. The beauty of the place seems to have had no particular
effect upon the people who live there. It has never been a centre of
thought or activity. It ought, one would have thought, to