From beneath the bridge comes the sound of busy waters, a sound, as is often the case with running water, that you do not hear unless you listen for it carefully.  Close by, too, at the famous spring, crystal waters are welling forth from the rock, pure and stainless as they were a thousand years ago.  All else is silent in the village.  The sky is flecked by myriads of tiny cloudlets, all separate from each other, and mostly of one shape and size; but just below the brilliant orb, which floats serene and proud above the line of mackerel sky, fantastic peaks of clouds, like far-off snow-capped heights of rugged Alps, are pointing upwards.

Suddenly there comes a change.  A fairy circle of prismatic colour is gathering round the moon, beautifying the scene a thousandfold; an inner girdle of hazy emerald hue immediately surrounds the lurid orb, which is now seen as “in a glass darkly”; whilst encircling all is a narrow rim of red light, like the rosy hues of the setting sun that have scarcely died away in the west.  The beauty of this lunar rainbow is enhanced by the framework of shapely ash trees through whose branches it is seen.

Along the river bank, nestling under the hanging wood, are rows of old stone cottages, with gables warped a little on one side.  One light shines forth from the lattice window of the ancient mill; but in the cool thick-walled houses the honest peasants are slumbering in deep, peaceful sleep.

     “Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep. 
        The river glideth at his own sweet will: 
      Dear God, the very houses seem asleep.”

      WORDSWORTH.

We are in the very heart of England.  What a contrast to London at night, where many a poor fellow must be tossing restlessly in the stifling atmosphere!

As we return towards the old manor house the nightjar, or goatsucker, is droning loudly, and a nightingale—­actually a nightingale!—­is singing in the copse.  These birds seldom visit us in the Cotswolds.  In the deserted garden the scent of fresh-mown hay is filling the air, and

     “The moping owl doth to the moon complain
       Of such as wander near her secret bower.”

As we go we pluck some sprigs of fragrant honeysuckle and carry them indoors.  And so to bed, passing on the broad oak staircase the weird picture of the man who built this rambling old house more than three hundred years ago.

There is a plain everyday phenomenon connected with pictures, and more especially photographs, which must have been noticed time after time by thousands of people; yet I never heard it mentioned in conversation or saw it in print.  I allude to the extraordinary sympathy the features of a portrait are capable of assuming towards the expression of countenance of the man who is looking at it.  There is something at times almost uncanny in it.  Stand opposite a photograph of a friend when you are feeling sad, and the picture is sad.  Laugh, and the mouth of