As we passed under Barnes railway bridge, where the tide was rushing through the arches with all the pent-up waters of the reach beyond, Min, who had been hitherto apparently distrait, like myself, not having spoken, observed, that, the sight of a river flowing along always made her feel reflective and sad. "It recalls to my mind," said she, "those lines of Longfellow's, from the _Coplas de Manrique_. "`Our lives are rivers, gliding free, To that unfathom'd boundless sea, The silent grave! Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave.'" "I prefer," said I, "Tennyson's _Brook_. Our laureate's description of a moving river is not so sombre as that of the American poet; and, besides, has more life and action about it." "How many different poets have sung the praises of the Thames," said Miss Pimpernell. "I suppose more poetry,--good, bad, and indifferent-- has been written about it, than for all the other rivers of the world combined." "You are right, my dear," said the vicar; "more, by a good deal! The Jordan has been distinguished in Holy Writ especially; Horner has celebrated the Xanthus and Simois, and Horace the tawny Tiber; the rivers of Spain have been painted by Calderon, Lope de Vega and Aldana; the Rhine and its legends sang of by Uhland and Goethe and Schiller--not to speak of the fabled Nile, as it was in the days of Sesostris, when Herodotus wrote of it; and the Danube, the Po, and the Arno,--all rivers of the old world, that have been described by a thousand poets. But, above all these, the Thames has furnished a more frequent theme, and for great poets, too! Every aspirant for the immortal bays has tried his 'prentice hand on it, from Chaucer, in excelsis, down to the poet Close at the foot of the Parnassian ladder!