178 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



We have been walking steadily, in a nearly straight line, 

 for two hours, and now the crowd thickens rapidly until it is 

 for a moment at full tide of Broadway density. There is a 

 long break in the brick house-fronts, and we forge aside out 

 of the crowd and halt to take an observation. We are lean 

 ing over the parapet of Elackfriar s Bridge. The Thames 

 looks much as I had supposed ; something wider than our 

 travellers like to represent it, hardly an &quot; insignificant stream&quot; 

 even to an eye accustomed to American rivers, but wide 

 enough and deep enough and strong enough to make bridges 

 of magnificence necessary to cross it, and answering all the 

 requirements needed in a ship-canal passing through the midst 

 of a vast town. A strong current setting upward from the 

 sea gurgles under the arches ; heavy coal-barges slowly sweep 

 along with it ; dancing, needle-like wherries shoot lightly 

 across it, and numerous small, narrow steamboats, crowded 

 with passengers, plough white furrows up and down its dark 

 surface. 



Upon the bank opposite almost upon the bank, and not 

 distant in an artist s haze stand blackened walls and a noble 

 old dome, familiar to us from childhood. It is only nearer, 

 blacker, and smaller wofully smaller than it has always 

 been. We do not even think of telling each other it is 

 SAINT PAUL S. 



There is a low darkness, and the houses and all are sooty 

 in streaks, but there is a pure so far as our lungs and noses 

 know pure, fresh, cool breeze sweeping up the river, and 

 overhead a cloudless sky ; and in the clear ether, clear as 

 Cincinnati s, there is a new satellite beautiful, beautiful as 

 the moon s young daughter. It is the balloon, now so high 

 that the car is invisible, and without any perceptible motion 

 it blushes in golden sunlight, while we have been some time 

 since left to evening s dusk. 



