172 WINTER SUNSHINE 



and yet it is only chip by chip, or grain by grain, 

 that ruin approaches. The timber also lasts an in- 

 credibly long time. Beneath one of the arched 

 ways, in the Chester wall above referred to, I saw 

 timbers that must have been in place five or six 

 hundred years. The beams in the old houses, also 

 fully exposed to the weather, seem incapable of de- 

 cay; those dating from Shakespeare's time being 

 apparently as firm as ever. 



I noticed that the characteristic aspect of the 

 clouds in England was difi'erent from ours, — soft, 

 fleecy, vapory, indistinguishable, — never the firm, 

 compact, sharply-defined, deeply-dyed masses and 

 fragments so common in our own sky. It rains 

 easily but slowly. The average rainfall of London 

 is less than that of ISTew York, and yet it doubtless 

 rains ten days in the former to one in the latter. 

 Storms accompanied with thunder are rare; while 

 the crashing, wrenching, explosive thunder-gusts so 

 common with us, deluging the earth and convulsing 

 the heavens, are seldom known. 



In keeping with this elemental control and mod- 

 eration, I found the character and manners of the 

 people gentler and sweeter than I had been led to 

 believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, im- 

 pertinence; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at 

 women, no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, 

 no insolence of porters or clerks or conductors, no 

 importunity of bootblacks or newsboys, no omniv- 

 orousness of hackmen, — at least, comparatively 

 none, — all of which an American is apt to notice, 



