c mind again, you perceive,--Sanitary investigation; by
oracle of the God of Death. Whatever can be produced of disease, by
flies, by aphides, by lice, by communication of corruption, shall not we
moderns also wisely inquire, and so recover of our diseases?

All which may, for aught I know, be well; and when I hear of the vine
disease or potato disease being stayed, I will hope also that plague may
be, or diphtheria, or aught else of human plague, by due sanitary
measures.

288. In the meantime, I see that the common cleanliness of the earth and
its water is despised, as if _it_ were a plague; and after myself
laboring for three years to purify and protect the source of the
loveliest stream in the English midlands, the Wandel, I am finally
beaten, because the road commissioners insist on carrying the road
washings into it, at its source. But that's nothing. Two years ago, I
went, for the first time since early youth, to see Scott's country by
the shores of Yarrow, Teviot, and Gala waters. I will read you once
again, though you will remember it, his description of one of those
pools which you are about sanitarily to draw off into your
engine-boilers, and then I will tell you what I saw myself in that
sacred country.

Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,
By lone Saint Mary's silent lake;
Thou know'st it well,--nor fen, nor sedge,
Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge;
Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink;
And just a trace of silver sand
Marks where the water meets the land.

Far in the mirror, bright and blue,
Each hill's huge outline you may view;
Shaggy with heath, but lonely, bare,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake, is there,
Save where, of land, yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine.

* * * * *

And silence aids--though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.

Nought living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near;
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid Our Lady's chapel low,
Yet still beneath the hallow'd soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid,
Where erst his simple fathers pray'd.

289. What I saw myself, in that fair country, of which the sight remains
with m