have a quiet smoke whilst amusing himself watching the craft going up and down stream. The bridges at Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire and at Wakefield in Yorkshire have their old chapels, and one of the bridges at Monmouth has its ancient fortified gateway thereon; but I do not know of any bridge in England besides that of St. Ives that has an inhabited house upon it.
A HOUSE ON A BRIDGE. Crossing the river on the quaint, old, and time-*worn bridge (of which an engraving is given at the head of the first chapter), we soon found ourselves once again in the greenful country; and walking over a meadow that seemed to us a good mile long, we reached the pleasant Ouse, shimmering like a broad band of silver in the soft sunshine, and gliding slowly and smoothly along its sinuous course between flower-decked fields and reed-grown banks, with over-arching trees ever and again that gave deliciously cool reflections in the stream below.
After the hoary bridge and ancient time-dimmed town, how fresh and bright looked the fair open country, so full of exuberant vitality! How gray and aged the dusky town appeared from our distant standpoint—the wear and tear of centuries was upon it; by contrast how ever young and unchangeable the country seemed. The one so mutable, the other so immutable!
As we wandered on, we suddenly found ourselves in a most picturesque nook, where the river made a bend and a bay, and was overshadowed by trees—a peace-bestowing spot it was, and in the shallow edge of the stream, beneath the sheltering
