I HAVE named, among many rivers that make music in my memory,that dirty Water of Leith. Often and often I desire to look upon itagain; and the choice of a point of view is easy to me. It should be at acertain water-door, embowered in shrubbery. The river is theredammed back for the service of the flour-mill just below, so that it liesdeep and darkling, and the sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glintof gold; and it has but newly been recruited by the borrowings of thesnuff-mill just above, and these, tumbling merrily in, shake the pool toits black heart, fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the curded froth ofmany other mills solemnly steering to and fro upon the surface. Or soit was when I was young; for change, and the masons, and the pruningknife,have been busy; and if I could hope to repeat a cherishedexperience, it must be on many and impossible conditions. I mustchoose, as well as the point of view, a certain moment in my growth, sothat the scale may be exaggerated, and the trees on the steep oppositeside may seem to climb to heaven, and the sand by the water-door,where I am standing, seem as low as Styx. And I must choose theseason also, so that the valley may be brimmed like a cup with sunshineand the songs of birds; - and the year of grace, so that when I turn toleave the riverside I may find the old manse and its inhabitantsunchanged.It was a place in that time like no other: the garden cut into provincesby a great hedge of beech, and over-looked by the church and the terraceof the churchyard, where the tombstones were thick, and after nightfall"spunkies" might be seen to dance at least by children; flower-plotslying warm in sunshine; laurels and the great yew making elsewhere apleasing horror of shade; the smell of water rising from all round, withan added tang of paper-mills; the sound of water everywhere, and thesound of mills - the wheel and the dam singing their alternate strain; thebirds on every bush and from every corner of the overhanging woods