THE SEARCH AND FINDING. l\ 



who has ever driven a cow to water, or wet a line in 

 the eddies, could be exponent. 



And in the romantic aspect of the matter, I "be- 

 lieve there is nothing in nature which so enlaces one's 

 love for the country, and binds it with willing fetters, 

 as the silver meshes of a brook. N"ot for its beauty 

 only, but for its changes ; it is the warbler ; it is the 

 silent muser ; it is the loiterer ; it is the noisy 

 brawler ; and like all brawlers beats itself into angry 

 foam ; and turns in the eddies demurely penitent, 

 and runs away to sulk under the bush. A brook, too, 

 piques terribly a man's audacity, if he have any eye 

 for landscape gardening. It seems so manageable, 

 in all its wildness. Here in the glen a bit of dam 

 will give a white gush of waterfall, and a pouring 

 sluice to some overshot wheel ; and the wheel shall 

 have its connecting shaft and whirl of labors. Of 

 course there shall be a little scape-way for the trout to 

 pass up and down ; a rustic bridge shall spring across 

 somewhere below, and the stream shall be coaxed into 

 loitering where you will under the roots of a beech 

 that leans over the water into a broad pool of the 

 pasture close, where the cattle may cool themselves in 

 August. In short, it is easy to see how a brook may 

 be held in leash, and made to play the wanton foi you, 

 summer after summer. I do not forget that poor 

 Shenstone ruined himself by his coquetries with the 



