180 STREAMS 



"wash" of the season rolls onward to the sea, bear- 

 ing the corruption along with it. There the unplea- 

 sant and pernicious substances continue united with 

 it; but no sooner has it passed the inconceivably 

 fine but hardly discernible filter of the atmosphere, 

 than all its impurities are removed, and the water 

 alone and unadulterated, remains there, till, by the 

 working of that very atmosphere which has lifted it 

 up, it shall descend more soft and limpid than the 

 sweetest spring that ever flowed from the rock. 



It is owing to this property of the atmosphere 

 that we have springs, and streams, and rivers. The 

 Thames, for all its wealth, and the Mississippi and 

 the St. Lawrence, notwithstanding their majesty 

 and the immense volume of waters which they con- 

 stantly roll to the sea, all originate in the clouds, 

 and may be said to flow from the heavens. But the 

 real sources of them are in those places from which 

 the evaporative power of the atmosphere drinks 

 them up, or rather perhaps in those natural opera- 

 tions by which the elements of water are loosened 

 from other connexions, and left free to combine and 

 form that all-refreshing substance. While there- 

 fore we cannot avoid being pleased with the bright 

 and lively rill which dances from rock to rock to 

 the murmuring cadences of its own music ; while 

 we cannot avoid lingering " to pore upon the brook 

 which babbles by" the gnarled root of the aged 

 tree, which winds round the churchyard with its 

 gray stones, which steals through the shade of the 

 osiers, with softer and more silent wing than the 

 owl does through the coppice, which slumbers in the 

 mill-pond, until obedient to the control of man it 

 leaps in glittering pearls over the wheel to assist him 

 in his labours ; which steals through the meadows, 

 now holding its glassy mirror to the sky, and now 

 hidden by the bright iris and the bristling sword- 

 flag ; and which after it has run its course, the orna- 

 ment and the fertilizer of its own native valley, 



