A Hertfordshire Valley. 7 



of lavender, and the like some such inn as Shenstone, no 

 doubt, had in his mind when he wrote the dreadful 

 heresy 



" Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, 

 Where'er his stages may have been, 

 May sigh to think he still has found 

 The warmest welcome at an inn." 



From the doorway of this anglers' tavern at Rickmans- 

 worth you look out upon the canal. The straight stretch of 

 sluggish water at eventide reflects the sunset, and catches 

 the parting glints of daylight. A canal is not per se an 

 object of beauty, but a bridge or two, fringes of sedge and 

 bulrush, cattle reflected in the water, and trees overhanging 

 here and there, take much from the hard and fast lines of the 

 artificial channel. It is not an effort of imagination, there- 

 fore, to represent this prosaic canal as a salient feature of 

 the winsome picture spread before us from our standpoint, 

 and the general effect is heightened by the broadening of the 

 water at the jutting point where the Colne runs into and 

 across it, under the high Chinese-looking bridge up which 

 the barge horses have to climb. In the meadows to the 

 right of this bridge there are notice-boards warning delin- 

 quents with angling propensities against the penalties of the 

 law, and offering rewards to any member of the community 

 who will detect and expose the poacher. 



A small rustic bridge further on, under overshadowing 

 trees, conducts to the waterside, margined for a while with 

 an osier bed. Beyond the further bank the distant houses 

 of the town peep from beneath the greenwood, and the road 

 may be traced by its fringe of trees. Shorthorns feed in the 

 verdant meads ; bees hum in the air ; swallows hawk over 

 the fields and pursue their prey to the surface of the water, 

 from which they can whisk it without a splash. 



