ough what a "welkin" is, I have never
yet been able to discover--with repeated injunctions to his somewhat
lazy steed to "gee whup" and "gee wo!"

We had no "Bridge of Sighs," to pursue the parallel, where the roving
eye might detect "a palace and a prison on either hand;" but, in its
stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension
Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on
the hither and further shore. Our course led, not through serpentine
canals and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of
tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as
historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However,
as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by
willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and
requiring a stiff weather helm to keep her course, we often caught
glimpses of ivy-wreathed churches, charming villa residences and gothic
summer-houses, peeping out from amidst the river-lining trees--with a
verdant meadow here and there to break the view, its smoothly-mown
surface sweeping down to the water's edge; while, we knew, also, that
the stream which bore us on its bosom flowed over stakes and hurdles
that our indigo-dyed ancestors, the ancient Britons, had planted in its
bed, long before Caesar's conquering legions crossed the channel, or
Venice possessed "a local habitation and a name."

You may say, probably, that all this is a regular rigmarole of nonsense;
but, what else would you have?

It was a nice, beautiful, hot summer day, as our gondola glided on
Richmondwards.

We were a merry party, all in all, passing the time with genial and
general conversation--and, occasionally, graver talk--as the mood suited
us. The cheerful voices of the children, who were packed as tightly as
herrings in a barrel in the bows of our craft, and their happy laughter,
chimed in with the wash of the tide as it swept by the sides of our
gallant barque, hurrying down to meet the flood at Gravesend. The larks
were singing madly in the blue sky overhead. Each and all completed the
harmony of the scene, affording us enjoyment in turn.

Disgusted apparently with our merriment and frivolity, Miss Spight,
shortly after we started, introduced a polemical discussion.

"My dear sir," said she to the vicar, our captain and coxswain in chief,
who stately sat in the sternsheets of the gondola, "don't you thi