136 VIGNETTES FROM MATURE. 



XIV. 



THE CARP POND. 



THE little stretch of artificial water in Chil- 

 combe Hollow, put there to form an element 

 in the view from the drawing-room windows 

 of the manor-house, positively teems with 

 great, fat, lazy carp, whose broad dark backs 

 I can just distinguish through the pond when 

 they sail across slowly from one waving bunch 

 of weed to another in their heavy, lumbering, 

 overfed way. There is a certain natural con- 

 gruity between the carp and the pond natural, 

 I mean, in the sense that both are highly 

 artificial, just as we might say that a shepherd- 

 ess in silk skirts with a pastoral crook was 

 perfectly natural in a fete champdtre of the 



