258 SOMERSETSHIRE COOMBS 



quiet, slumbrous streams which poets' fancies have ever 

 painted as singing the lullaby of sleeping gods. The 



" Rivus aquae Lethes, per quern cum murmure labens 

 Invitat somnos crepitantibus unda lapillis ; " 



the 



" Rock-born flow of L'ethe's streams, 

 With muffled murmur of a thousand tongues, 

 Of tinkling pebbles soothing Somnus' dreams." 



Merriment, not repose, is the best and brightest gift of 

 the young summer ; and we must seek it, not by the 

 solemn rivers of the plain, or by the dropping springs 

 of the rocks, but by the brooks that come dancing 

 down from the hills, and overrun in a thousand tiny 

 channels the sloping meadows of Somerset or Devon. 



There are thousands of such rivulets in the west 

 country, not brown and peaty, like the becks of York- 

 shire or the burns of Scotland, nor white and glassy, 

 like the Hampshire chalk-streams, but honest little 

 home-spun brooks without a history, though rarely 

 lacking a name, some running through the homesteads 

 of the upland farms, some rilling the fish-ponds of the 

 old manor-houses, others mere channels in the broken 

 faces of the hills. But whatever the nature of their 

 upper course, all are alike controlled at last by the 

 ingenious western farmer, and carried along the ridges 

 of the coombs in a network of terraced rivulets, by a 

 system of engineering which tradition has made almost 

 perfect for its purpose, until they reunite at last and 

 rush through the wooded bottoms to the waiting sea. 

 In early summer, these water-meadows are the chosen 



