III.-RIVERS AND LAKES.
By Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P.
CCORDING to the traditions of ancient times, running water was proof against all sorcery and witchcraft—
"No spell could stay the living tide,
Or charm the rushing stream."
There was much truth, as well as beauty, in this idea. Flowing waters have not only power to wash away material stains, and to cleanse the outward body, but they also clear away the cobwebs of the brain—the results of over incessant work—and restore us to health and strength.
Snowfields and glaciers, mountain torrents, sparkling brooks, and stately rivers; pools, and lakes; and last, not least, the great ocean itself, all alike possess this magic power.
"When I would beget content," says Izaak Walton, "and increase confidence in the power, and wisdom, and providence of Almighty God, I will walk the meadows by some gliding stream, and there contemplate the lilies that take no care, and those very many other little living creatures that are not only created, but fed (man knows not how) by the goodness of the God of nature, and therefore trust in Him;" and in his quaint, old language he craves a special blessing on all those "that are true lovers of virtue, and dare trust in His providence, and be quiet and go a-angling.'
"Of all inorganic substances," says Ruskin, "acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in the clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was
modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of un-
- ↑ Leyden
