But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent upon their

floats, who let us go by without one glance. They perched upon

sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the embankment,

gently occupied. They were indifferent, like pieces of dead

nature. They did not move any more than if they had been fishing

in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but

they continued in one stay like so many churches established by

law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads,

and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their

skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber

stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I

do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for

ever and a day, by still and depopulated waters.

At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock-mistress

who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a couple

of leagues from Brussels. At the same place, the rain began again.

It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the surface of the canal

was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal fountains. There

were no beds to be had in the neighbourhood. Nothing for it but to

lay the sails aside and address ourselves to steady paddling in the

rain.

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shuttered

windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, gave a

rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the deepening dusk to the

shores of the canal. I seem to have seen something of the same

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