And now our boat awaits us at Mr. Bond's landing-stage, and we will start on our pleasant little smooth-water voyage. In a few moments we float under that wide-arched railway bridge which had hidden Bray from us; and we see on our right hand an old church tower rising apparently from out a cluster of tall, gaunt, windy poplars. We must land at Bray. The church has been severely restored, but it presents specimens of the historical architectural sequence of Early English, of Decorated, and of Perpendicular. It contains good brasses (particularly one of Sir John Foxle and his two wives), which range in date between 1378 and 1594; and it is celebrated for its only too well-known vicar, who enjoys all the popularity which attaches to comic baseness. Stone and flint are largely used in this church; but we eagerly pass on from the churchyard to seek the Jesus Hospital, founded in 1627 by William Goddard, as a refuge for forty poor persons. This beneficent refuge is a very picturesque quadrangle of one-storey brick almshouses, and the quadrangle encloses garden plots planted with flowers. It seems to be well maintained and well cared for. But the Jesus Hospital has an interest which transcends its own picturesqueness and exceeds almost its own value. It is the scene selected by a young painter of genius--Frederick Walker--as a suggestion for his noble picture, the "Harbour of Refuge." Ruskin says, "A painter designs when he chooses some things, refuses others, and arranges all;" and Walker has chosen to do away with the gardens, and to fill up the quadrangle with a lawn, a statue, and a terrace. The old chapel he rightly retains. He has sacrificed fact to the higher truth of ideal art. Walker was emphatically not one of those many painters who have mistaken their vocation. He was a true and an original artist. He saw a poetical suggestion in this retreat for poverty and for age; and in the tender sadness of summer evening after sunset he has placed a mower, whose scythe, like that of Time, is sweeping down things ripe for death. The night, in which no man can work, is about to fall; and a few figures, chiefly of sad, of aged, worn-out men and women, are waiting until the angel of Death shall gather them to deathless peace. The sentiment, the poetry of the picture, are most touching. Scene and hour are felicitously selected, and the humanity which belongs to this pictorial drama is finely conceived. World-wearied, life-worn creatures, old, weak, poor, and sad, with the flicker of faint life just lingering tremblingly, are those on whom the painter has laid stress. They stand upon the low, dark verge of life, the twilight of eternal day; and soon, very soon, shall they relax their weak grasp of life, and go hence, and be no more seen. Such was the idea that dominated Walker, and he has realised his idea. There is infinite pathos in this work of tender melancholy and of exquisite loveliness.