THE RIVER 



iHERE is a slight but perceptible colour 

 in the atmosphere of summer. It is 

 not visible close at hand, nor always 

 where the light falls strongest, and if 

 looked at too long it sometimes fades away. But 

 over gorse and heath, in the warm hollows of 

 wheatfields, and round about the rising ground 

 there is something more than air alone. It is not 

 mist, nor the hazy vapour of autumn, nor the blue 

 tints that come over distant hills and woods. 



As there is a bloom upon the peach and grape, 

 so this is the bloom of summer. The air is ripe 

 and rich, full of the emanations, the perfume, from 

 corn and flower and leafy tree. In strictness the 

 term will not, of course, be accurate, yet by what 

 other word can this appearance in the atmosphere 

 be described but as a bloom ? Upon a still and 

 sunlit summer afternoon it may be seen over the 

 osier-covered islets in the Thames immediately 

 above Teddington Lock. 



It hovers over the level cornfields that stretch 

 towards Richmond, and along the ridge of the 

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