g the grass, standing singly, in couples, in
whole companies, yellow as the yolk of eggs, and glowing with an added
lustre, I felt, because, being powerless to consummate with my palate
the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would
let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until
it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of
absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest
childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards
them, before even I could pronounce their charming name--a name fit for
the Prince in some French fairy-tale; colonists, perhaps, in some far
distant century from Asia, but naturalised now for ever in the village,
well satisfied with their modest horizon, rejoicing in the sunshine
and the water's edge, faithful to their little glimpse of the
railway-station; yet keeping, none the less, as do some of our old
paintings, in their plebeian simplicity, a poetic scintillation from the
golden East.

I would amuse myself by watching the glass jars which the boys used
to lower into the Vivonne, to catch minnows, and which, filled by the
current of the stream, in which they themselves also were enclosed, at
once 'containers' whose transparent sides were like solidified water
and 'contents' plunged into a still larger container of liquid,
flowing crystal, suggested an image of coolness more delicious and more
provoking than the same water in the same jars would have done, standing
upon a table laid for dinner, by shewing it as perpetually in flight
between the impalpable water, in which my hands could not arrest it, and
the insoluble glass, in which my palate could not enjoy it. I decided
that I would come there again with a line and catch fish; I begged for
and obtained a morsel of bread from our luncheon basket; and threw into
the Vivonne pellets which had the power, it seemed, to bring about a
chemical precipitation, for the water at once grew solid round about
them in oval clusters of emaciated tadpoles, which until then it had, no
doubt, been holding in solution, invisible, but ready and alert to enter
the stage of crystallisation.

Presently the course of the Vivonne became choked with water-plants.
At first they appeared singly, a lily, for instance, which the current,
across whose path it had unfortunately grown, would never leave at rest
for a moment, so that, like a ferry-boat mechanically propelled