170 <I(4fMBLES OF A VOtMINIS 



is said that he was in the habit of visiting the town on 

 his journeys to and from Plymouth, and of spending 

 hours in the church in contemplation of the picture. 



The path on the bank of the river, passing the old 

 house where Blake was born, and which is still much as 

 he last saw it in the heyday of his great renown, crosses 

 the main street of the little port, leads past the now un- 

 seen Watergate of the castle, along the narrow coal- 

 blackened quays, past the smoking brick-kilns to the 

 fields beyond the town. If the fame of this quiet little 

 port is not widely known beyond the limits of the island, 

 its work is familiar probably to half the civilised 

 world. 



Bath bricks, first invented by a Mr. Bath, of Bridg- 

 water, are still made from the mud of the Parret, and 

 are at least the most noted produce of the town. The 

 retiring tide deposits a stratum of mud, which, if undis- 

 turbed, reaches in the course of a year a thickness of as 

 much as twelve feet. This is dug from the banks at 

 intervals of three months, made into bricks, and baked 

 in the furnaces whose great red cones are so conspicuous 

 along the shore. There is only quite a limited distance 

 above and below the town, where the salt and fresh 

 water mingling in certain proportions leave a deposit of 

 just the right consistency for making bricks. 



An hour before high water the slow moving river 

 seems to loiter in its flow, as if pausing undecided in its 

 course. The floating rubbish is now swept slowly down, 

 and now as slowly drifted back by a sudden flaw of wind. 

 They have seen the Bore a hundred times, but groups 



