And yet, across all boundaries, across the frontier of the suburbs, what is this strange scrap of the real May of the natural world dropped into the midst of the May of London? A scrap of that true spring alighted in the midst of the very winter would hardly look so strange as this shred of the very spring in the spring of town. It is but some accidental grass or leaf that has been shed and sown by some west wind upon the edges of the tiles of a little old poor roof in town. Not into the parks did it fly, not amongst the flower-walks or on the great sward, emerald green. It hovered and flitted into the middle of town, a little flock of wild lives. The enormous spring, the May of all the earth, unmarked, disguised by a delusive likeness to the London spring, has visited the town. It is a dainty _incognito_. It signals to those who know; but if Vestries recognised it--and supposing they cared enough for roofs of that kind, which they do not--they would take that grass up by the roots. BELOW BRIDGE The first impression, and, needless to say, the longest, is that of the many miles of wharves compared with the few miles of embankments, drives, and of the holiday river generally. Not only have the black and brown warehouses, the chimneys, and the cranes possession of the whole right bank of the London Thames, but they hold both banks of the lower Thames through league-long reaches and noble curves, and such changes of aspect, sky, and direction as renew the scene by the rule of the sky. [Illustration: _Below Bridge._] Besides this slow variation of light, in which the view wheels under the wheeling cloud, there is no lack of variety along the dusky banks of the river of commerce. The subsidence of height along the warehouses as the river draws further and further from the middle of London is an incident of continuous interest, interrupted now and then, but holding on persistently, until the carrying river flows through a dark-gabled, low, and long village towards the eastern woods and heights and the further fields. [Illustration: BELOW BRIDGE.]