The Thames lay at our feet, spread out like a map. The sky was clearing, and the river was very quiet. Now and then the sullen waters, driven in an eddy against the huge piers, could be heard plashing in a secret, stealthy manner, and anon they would recede and come back again, plash! plash! plash! All about us was so still; not a sound to be heard as we leaned over one of the alcoves in the bridge. Below us, to the left, the Catharine Docks, full of shipping; the London Docks, full of shipping; Shadwell lined with lighter craft--all so still, and the million of masts looking ghostly in the holy light of the midnight. Over on the right, Bermondsey-way, more shipping--countless spars pointing up to the midnight skies; the Pool choked with shipping--coal barges, eel-boats, East India vessels, brigs and schooners, barks and black-hulled packets, lying high in the water; flat-bottomed barges for carrying sand and for dredging; the gray coping stones of the Tower hanging over the water, and the stillness of death on noisy Rotherhithe, and a pall over the immense West India docks. This great river, this river of all the nations of the world, with their tributes laid at her docks and their gifts on her broad bosom--how quiet it is just now. A matchless stream for its congregated wealth. Miles of warehouses, miles of stone docks, miles of shipping, and thousands of seamen. And yet a dirty and turbid and ungrateful river at times, when it overflows the fish-stalls, when it overflows the high street in Wapping and drowns myriads of rats in Upper and Lower Thames street. [Sidenote: VAGRANCY AND PAUPERISM.]