194 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



receives back again and yet is for ever at rest enters 

 into and soothes the heart. 



The time slips by, a rook emerges from yonder mass 

 of foliage, and idly floats across, and is hidden in 

 another tree. A whitethroat rises from a bush and 

 nervously discourses, gesticulating with wings and 

 tail, for a few moments. But this is not possible for 

 long ; the immense magnetism of London, as I have 

 said before, is too near. There comes the quick short 

 beat of a steam launch shooting down the river hard 

 by, and the dream is over. I rise and go on again. 



Already one of the willows planted about the pond 

 is showing the yellow leaf, before midsummer. It 

 reminds me of the inevitable autumn. In October 

 these ponds, now apparently deserted, will be full of 

 moorhens. I have seen and heard but one to day, 

 but as the autumn comes on they will be here again, 

 feeding about the island, or searching on the sward by 

 the shore. Then, too, among the beeches that lead 

 from hence towards the fanciful pagoda the squirrels 

 will be busy. There are numbers of them, and their 

 motions may be watched with ease. I turn down by 

 the river ; in the ditch at the foot of the ha-ha wall is 

 plenty of duckweed, the Lemna of the tank. 



A little distance away, and almost on the shore, as it 

 seems, of the Thames, is a really noble horse-chestnut, 

 whose boughs, untouched by cattle, come sweeping 

 down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to lie 

 on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their 

 contact. Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of 

 encampments in Hindostan beneath banyan trees, 

 where white tent cloths are stretched from branch to 



