The woods in the English place were beautifully kept, but they
were uninteresting, for there were no rocks or great stones in
them. An English brook was a dull, prosaic, lifeless stream,
rolling its clay-stained waters stolidly along, with never a
dimple of laughter on its surface, or a joyous little gurgle of
surprise at finding that it was suddenly called upon to take a
headlong leap of ten feet. The English brooks were so silent, too,
compared to our noisy Ulster burns, whose short lives were one
clamorous turmoil of protest against the many obstacles with which
nature had barred their progress to the sea; here swirling over a
miniature crag, there babbling noisily among a labyrinth of
stones. They ultimately became merged in a foaming, roaring salmon
river, expanding into amber-coloured pools, or breaking into white
rapids; a river which retained to the last its lordly independence
and reached the sea still free, refusing to be harnessed or
confined by man. Our English brook, after its uneventful
childhood, made its stolid matter-of-fact way into an equally dull
little river which crawled inertly along to its destiny somewhere
down by the docks.
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