The hour and the place compelled to reverie, and memory consenting to their evocative charm, I peopled the still scene with the forms of those who had swayed or shared the fortunes of this land; imperious Elizabeth and gentler Mary, the slight heroic figure with one sleeve pinned empty on the breast, and all those who, going down to their business in deep waters or returning therefrom, have saluted with melancholy or with joy these towers and this wooded hill. I thought of the lads playing beneath these trees, and so inbreathing the spirit of this place that for them there was no career but to follow the river down to ocean, and ocean himself in his circuit of the world. I thought of the veterans returned from that quest, old Argonauts of a later day, now clustering round the Hospital fires and perhaps recalling amid tales of havens and high seas the very morning when they first dropped round the bend and passed into the new world beyond. For this Thames is such an avenue and entry into marvellous life that earth can show no greater rival, none more rich in dignity or in the multitude of its merchandise. And if the flood of that merchandise shall cease, and the stream once more go lonely to the sea or carry coracles, it cannot be again as if it had never borne great ships, or swung the Admiral's galley on its tide. It is good for an Englishman to stand here and listen to the brown waters lapping on the old walls and caulked timbers; to hear, as an under murmur, voices of Lechlade and Bablockhythe, for all intervening leagues of wood and meadow not altogether lost: before this persistence and continuity of youth to feel high thoughts stir within him and solemnize the nativity of new resolve. You cannot feel beneath your feet these old stones trodden by the great generations of your own blood and kindred, and not be moved to walk uprightly, to be approved by their shades as one not unworthy of such descent. For whether such worn stones be in the aisle of some great minster, or here, paving this narrow way for hurrying feet, the inspiration is as strong and the thankfulness not other. For this is a place of meridian, the navel of our land and empire; the wind searching its alleys has no usual voice, but as it were a deep and oceanic sound, according with old ballads and stories of the sea. I lingered leaning upon the rail until the tide had fallen from the wall, tracing along the narrow pebbled foreshore a clear marginal line of irregular contour, now sinuous, now straight, but palely luminous like a silver tone on some enamel of old Italy, a line drawn by a master draughtsman, in its inevitable and sure perfection wholly satisfying the eye. With the dark bank it vanished towards the great city, now marked in the upper sky by a hovering brightness of light escaped beyond the smoky rampart to tell the effort of innumerable lamps beneath, all pouring their blurred and vain effulgence to the disdainful stars.