edge; now we came to long armies of tall,
spear-shaped reeds, half-rising from the
water, and bowing with slow dignity and
reverence as we passed by; now we came to
distant red-bricked mansions, playing at bo-
peep amongst lofty trees; then, as the
graceful windings of our river carried us
further into the bosom of the parks, we saw
them for a few minutes standing boldly out
upon the brow of a hill, and then we lost
them at another turn in the stream; now we
came to little side brooks, which broke
musically over small sparkling waterfalls, gliding
into our silent byway, which carried them
gently away; now we came to old rope-worn
bridges that stood out against lofty background
of rustling poplars whose tops were
only familiar to the cloud-loving sky-larks;
now we came to other bridges, the arches of
which seemed half full of shady water, and
closed in with banks of shrubs and flowers,
through which it would be cruel to force a
passage; and now we passed little Ophelia-
loved pools, overhung with willows, tinted
with weeds, and silent as roadside graves.

Reclining here and there upon the rich
grass banks, or standing solitary, or in groups
of three or four, upon the towing path, were
patient anglers, all having the stamp of
dwellers in the closest portions of the
metropolis. They were common men to look
at—unshaven, unwashed; with ragged
clothes and with dirty shirts. The railway
had brought them in an hour, and for a
few pence, from Whitechapel or Bethnal
Green; and whatever they may have been in
their own lives, and their own homes, they
could scarcely fail to gain a little improvement
from the short communion with the
country, to which they had been led by the
allurement of their favourite sport. One
man, who fished by himself, was a middle-
aged Jew, bearing every appearance of days
passed in some yellow back-parlour, behind a
store of mouldy second-hand furniture up an
Aldgate Court.

Our horses are as docile, intelligent, and
well behaved as the trained steeds of the
circus; and, for many miles, they are left to
go on unled, chewing their provender in their
milking-can nose-bags. When they are free
from this encumbrance, and they stop too
long at a broken part of the bank to drink
out of the canal, they are urged on by a
shouting of their names, and a cracking of
the short whip by the steersman thirty
yards behind them. At bridges, where the
towing-path does not pass under the arch,
the mere unhooking of the rope is sufficient,
and the horse, freed from the weight of the
barge, walks quickly up the incline, over the
bridge, and down to the path, even when, as
is frequently the case, it changes to the other
side of the canal. There, he patiently waits,
until his burden floats through, and the rope
is again hooked on.

The Grand Junction Canal, passing in a
zig-zag direction through parts of Middlesex,
Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire,
to Braunston, in Northamptonshire, is
about forty-three feet in surface breadth,
upwards of ninety miles in length, and, with
one or two falls, is on a gradual rise from
Paddington, where it ends in a branch to
Braunston, where it begins in a gauging-
house. The locks are expensive structures,
costing, when double, two thousand pounds
a piece; and many of them are so close
together, that they form a series of steps in a
waterfall staircase. These lock-stations
furnish nearly the only examples of land-life
that we come in close contact with; for the
general course of canals is to avoid, where
it is possible, passing through the large
towns and villages, and wind round the
extreme ends, and distant outskirts of
such places. Many of the lock-houses are
very pretty. All of them are neat and
clean. In some of the most important lock-
houses, the keeper is seated in a little counting-
house amongst his books and papers; in
some of the smaller ones, rude accounts are
kept in mysterious chalk signs upon the
doorway or the walls. This is a favourite
mode of recording business in broad open
barges, engaged in carrying bricks, or other
cargoes requiring to be reckoned by
numbers; which numbers appear, not in numerals
but in broad chalk lines, marked on the sides
of the hold. At all the lock-houses, coy
little gardens peep out, and many of them
are profusely decorated with flowers both
inside and outside. One cottage on the canal-
bank, connected with the canal-traffic, is such
a complete nosegay, that the word Office,
and the City arms painted over its doorway,
are scarcely visible for roses.

While the Stourport is working slowly
through the foaming, eddying locks, and we
are reclining upon its poop, or sitting astride
of its tarpaulin's back-bone, we are objects
of interest and curiosity to the lock-keepers,
who salute us with "Good morning," or
remarks about the day, while their wives and
daughters peep slyly at the two unusual
strangers from behind the thin shelter of
their cottage curtains.

For strangers we are, and very mysterious
strangers, too, especially to the not over keen
intellect of Captain Randle. Any idea that
he may at one time have entertained about
our being upon a scientific engineering
expedition, having reference to the present
condition of the canal, must have been entirely
dispelled by our gross ignorance of practical
details. Sometimes, I fancy, Captain Randle
had a vague notion that I was a person
of enormous capital, bent upon purchasing
the whole plant and business of his masters,
the Company; and, at these periods he
must have had grave misgivings about the
prudence of the worthy chairman and
manager, who had sent us upon our tour
of inspection in a lightly loaded barge.