RIVERS OF GREAT BRITAIN:
THE THAMES, from Source to Sea.
1891
[ "The Royal River", 1885, has identical text and pictures ]

Cliefden Woods

DESCRIPTIVE, HISTORICAL, PICTORIAL
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE,
1891
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Gutenborg Source
Why did I add another version online when the marvellous people at Gutenborg have already placed it online?
True to their purpose they show as exactly as reasonable the original.
I have been able to add headings linked from the contents and an alphabetical index, and links to and from "Where Thames smooth waters glide"
There are many Victorian Books on the Thames - these mentioned quote each other extensively and are closely linked. There may well be others that should be included:

1859	"THE THAMES"	Mr & Mrs Hall	A trip down river
1881	"OUR RIVER"	George Leslie	An Artist and Punter's Guide with sketches
1891	"RIVERS OF GREAT BRITAIN, THE THAMES"	Various authors	THIS PAGE. Identical to THE ROYAL RIVER 1885
1889	"THREE MEN IN A BOAT"	Jerome K Jerome	The linked copy is the river journey without the humour! Sad really ...
	"Where Thames smooth Waters Glide"		..

CONTENTS

(Alphabetical Index at bottom of page)

CHAPTER I: Above Oxford by W. Senior

Map Sources of Thames, Thames Head, Engraving: Thames Head, Isis or Thames?, Thames Head or Seven Springs?, Seven Springs, Engraving: Seven Springs, River Churn, Thames and Severn Canal, Engraving: First Bridge Over The Thames, Thames Head Stream, Cricklade, Engraving: Cricklade, Castle Eaton, Kempsford, Inglesham, Inglesham Round House, Engraving: Inglesham Round House, Lechlade, St John's Lock, Engraving: St John's Lock, Buscot, Hart's Weir, Radcot Bridge, Engraving: Radcot Bridge, Rushy Lock, Tadpole Bridge, Ten Foot Weir, Duxford Ferry, Shifford Ferry, River Windrush, New Bridge, Langley or Ridges Weir, and Ark or Noah's Ark Weir, Bablock Hythe, Engraving: Bablock Hythe, Cumnor, Engraving: Cumnor, Stanton Harcourt, Stanton Harcourt Church, Engraving: Stanton Harcourt Church, Skinner's Weir, Pinkhill Lock, Eynsham Bridge, River Evenlode, Witham Hill, Hagley Pool, Godstow Bridge, Godstow Nunnery, Godstow Bridge and The Trout Inn, Port Meadow, Medley Weir and Footbridge, Osney.

CHAPTER 2: Oxford to Abingdon by D. MacColl

Oxford, from the Upper River, Two Rivers between Medley and Folly Bridge, The Old River, Folly Bridge, Engraving: Oxford from Headington Hill, Four Streams [Rivers], The River and the University, Oxford before the University, Engraving: New College from the gardens, Oxford Churches, Magdalen, Engraving: Magdalen Tower from the Cherwell, Engraving: Stone pulpit, Magdalen, Engraving: Tom Tower, Engraving: Dome Of The Radcliffe, From Brasenose, Magdalen Bridge, Oxford University and the River, Engraving: Bump at the Barges, Oxford River Navigation, College Barges, Engraving: Varsity Barge, Oxford, Iffley Mill, Engraving: Iffley Mill, Iffley Church, Engraving: Iffley Church, Littlemore Church, Engraving: Littlemore Church & Rose Island, Kennington Railway Bridge, Rose Island, Sandford Lock, Nuneham Park, Engraving: Picnic to Nuneham, Engraving: The Bridge & Cottage, Nuneham, Carfax, Black Railway Bridge Engraving: Distant View of Abingdon

CHAPTER 3: Abingdon to Streatley By J. Penderel-Brodhurst

Map: Abingdon to Streatley, Abingdon, Abingdon Bridge, Engraving: Abingdon Bridge, Engraving: Abingdon from the river, St Nicholas' Church, Abingdon, St Helen's Church, Abingdon, Christ's Hospital, Abingdon, Below Abingdon, Culham Bridge, Culham, Engraving: Culham Church, Culham Lock, Appleford Bridge and Clifton Lock, Clifton Hampden, Clifton Hampden Church, Engraving: Clifton Hampden Church, Barley Mow, Engraving: Dorchester from Little Wittenham, Day's Lock, Dorchester, Dorchester Abbey, Sinodun Hill, Engraving: Sinodun Hill & Day's Lock, Shillingford, Shillingford Bridge, Engraving: Shillingford Bridge, Shillingford To Benson, Benson Church, Benson Lock, Wallingford, Engraving: St Peter's & Wallingford Bridge, Former Wallingford Lock, Mongewell, Moulsford Railway Bridge, Moulsford & The Beetle And Wedge, Engraving: Moulsford Ferry, Cleeve Lock, Goring Lock, Goring And Streatley, Streatley Mill, Engraving: Streatley Mill, Streatley Church.

CHAPTER 4, STREATLEY TO HENLEY by W. SENIOR

Engraving: Thames at Streatley, Streatley & Goring, Map: Streatley & Goring, Engraving: Goring from the toll gate, The Grotto, [Gatehampton Railway Bridge], Basildon Ferry, Site of former Hart's Lock, Osier Farm, Whitchurch Lock, Engraving: Whitchurch Church & Mill, Hardwick, Mapledurham, Engraving: Mapledurham Church & Mill, Purley, The Roebuck, Poplar & Appletree Eyots, St Mary's Island, Above Caversham Bridge, Caversham Bridge, Engraving: Flooded Meadows, From Caversham Bridge, Simon De Montfort Island, Above Caversham Lock, Engraving: Thames At Reading, From The Old Clappers, Reading Abbey, River Kennet, Engraving: Sonning-on-Thames, Engraving: Sonning Weir, Below Sonning, Shiplake Village, River Loddon, St Patrick's Stream, Shiplake Lock, Engraving: Shiplake, A Camping out party, The George And Dragon, Wargrave, Wargrave, Hennerton Backwater, Engraving: Hennerton Backwater Lilies, Bolney Islands, Park Place Henley, Park Place Boathouse, Marsh Lock, Fishing, Below Marsh Lock

CHAPTER 5, HENLEY to MAIDENHEAD
by the Rev. PROFESSOR BONNEY, F.R.S.

Map: Henley to Maidenhead, Engraving: Henley from the tow-path, Henley Church, Henley Houses, Henley Bridge, Engraving: Red Lion Henley, Photo: Henley Regatta, Engraving: Regatta (Temple] Island, Boatrace 1829, Around Henley, Engraving: Fawley Court, Remenham, Greenlands, Hambleden Lock, Engraving: Aston Ferry, Aston Ferry, Culham Court, Engraving: Medmenham Abbey, Medmenham Abbey, Engraving: below Medmenham, below Medmenham, Hurley Lock, Temple Lock, Engraving: Bisham Abbey, Bisham Abbey, Engraving: Bisham Church, Bisham Church, Marlow, Engraving: Marlow from Quarry Woods, Who ate the puppy pie?, Engraving: Quarry Woods picnic, Quarry Woods, Bourne End, Engraving: Swans, Swans, Abney House, Distant View of Cliveden Woods, Cookham, Cookham Channels, Cookham Ferry Inn, Cookham delights, Engraving: Cookham, Cookham Church, Hedsor Park, Cookham Lock Cut, Engraving: Cookham Lock, Cookham Lock, Cliveden Deep, Cliveden House, Formosa Island, Bavins gulls islands (Slow Grove, Picnic), Engraving: Boulters Lock, Raymead, Landing stage, Boulters Lock, Taplow Court, Engraving: Taplow Woods, Maidenhead Bridge, Maidenhead Railway Bridge

CHAPTER 6, MAIDENHEAD TO WINDSOR
by By H. SCHÜTZ WILSON.

Map: Maidenhead to Windsor, Around Maidenhead, Engraving: Bray Church, Bray Church, Jesus Hospital, Bray, [ Painting: 'The Harbour of Refuge, by F Walker ], Reminiscence of rowing race, The Nature of the Thames, Pretty Girls, Thames Weather, Monkey Island, Engraving: Surley, Surley, Engraving: Boveney Lock, Boveney Lock, Eton College, Windsor Castle, Engraving: Windsor Castle from Romney Lock, St George's Chapel, Windsor, Two Poetic Prisoners at Windsor, Shakespeare at Windsor

CHAPTER 7, WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT
by GODFREY WORDSWORTH TURNER

Engraving: Procession of Boats, Eton, Map: Windsor to Hampton Court, Leaving Windsor, Eton, its History and its Worthies, Engraving: Eton from the playing fields, Eton, The College Buildings, Windsor Park, Windsor Park Long Walk, Victoria Bridge, Datchet and Falstaff, Albert Bridge Windsor, Albert Bridge Windsor, Engraving: Old Windsor Lock, Old Windsor Lock, Old Windsor Village, Perdita's Tomb, Old Windsor, Old Windsor Saxon Palace, Old Windsor Tapestry Works, Engraving: The Bells of Ousely, The Bells of Ousely, Wraysbury, Engraving: Magna Carta Island, Magna Carta Island, Engraving: Runnymede, Runnymede, Cooper's Hill, Sir John Denham, Picnic Island, The Angler's Rest, Gudgeon, The Naturalist, Egham, Runnymede Bridge, M25 & A30, Staines Bridge, Engraving: Staines Bridge, Staines & Egham, Engraving: London Stone, London Stone, [Staines Railway Bridge], Staines Deep, Deeps, Staines & Egham Inns, Penton Hook Lock, Engraving: Laleham Ferry, Laleham Ferry, Engraving: Laleham Church, Laleham Church, Engraving: Chertsey Bridge, Chertsey Bridge, Albert Smith & his Brother, Chertsey Abbey, Monastic Fish, Chertsey Abbey Ruins, Cowley at Chertsey, Dickens and Chertsey, Around Chertsey, The River Wey, Weybridge, Oatlands, Oatlands Grotto, Weybridge & the Boating Man, Engraving: Shepperton, Shepperton, Engraving: Shepperton Lock, Shepperton Lock, Halliford, Walton Bridge, Engraving: Halliford, Walton-on-Thames, Cowey Stakes, Walton Church, Engraving: Sunbury Weir, Sunbury, Engraving: Sunbury Church, Sunbury Church, Engraving: Between Sunbury & Hampton, Engraving: Garrick's Villa, Garrick's Villa, Islands near Hampton, Hampton Race Course, Apps Court, [Moulsey Lock], Hampton Court Bridge,

CHAPTER 8. HAMPTON COURT TO RICHMOND
by J. PENDEREL-BRODHURST.

Map, Hampton Court to Richmond, Hampton Court, Hampton Court riverside, Water Quality, Hampton Court Architecture, Engraving: Hampton Court Entrance Porch, Hampton Court Great Hall, Engraving: Hampton Court 1st Quad & Fountain Court, Engraving: In Reach below Hampton Court, Engraving: Thames Ditton, the Swan Inn, Swan Inn at Thames Ditton, Thames Ditton, Boyle Farm, Engraving: Thames Ditton Church, Thames Ditton Church, Houseboats, Surbiton, Engraving: Kingston from the River, Kingston, Kingston Bridge, Engraving: Kingston Market Place, Engraving: Kingston Coronation Stone, Kingston Coronation Stone, Engraving: Royal Barge, Below Kingston, Engraving: Teddington, the Angler's Inn, Teddington, Engraving: Strawberry Hill, Engraving: Pope's Villa, Twickenham, Pope's Villa, River State before Richmond Halftide Weir, Engraving: Twickenham Ferry, Twickenham Church, Twickenham York House, Engraving: Richmond, the Meadows and the Park, Ham House, Engraving: Richmond Terrace, Richmond, Petersham, Star and Garter, Richmond park,

CHAPTER 9. RICHMOND TO BATTERSEA
by the Rev. PROFESSOR BONNEY, F.R.S.

Map: Richmond to Battersea, Richmond, Sheen Palace, Engraving: between Richmond & Kew, Richmond Green, Richmond Church, Richmond Water Supply, Richmond Bridge, Richmond Railway Bridge, [Twickenham Bridge 1933], Richmond Old Deer Park, Sheen Priory, Engraving: River at Kew, KEW, Isleworth, Isleworth Ait, Engraving: Sion House, Sion House, Kew Gardens, Engraving: Kew Gardens Pagoda, Kew Observatory, Engraving: Cambridge Cottage, Kew, Engraving: Kew Bridge, Kew Bridge , Kew Green, Kew Green Cambridge Cottage, Engraving: Kew Green Cambridge Cottage, Brentford, River Brent, Mortlake, Engraving: High Water at Mortlake, Barnes, Barnes Railway Bridge, Chiswick, Engraving: Hogath's Tomb at Chiswick, Engraving: University Boat Race, [Chiswick Eyot], Engraving: Hammersmith Old Suspension Bridge, Hammersmith Old Suspension Bridge, Hammersmith, Barn Elms Reach, Putney, Engraving: Old Putney Bridge, Putney Bridge, Fulham, Fulham Church, Battersea Reach

CHAPTER 10 BATTERSEA TO LONDON BRIDGE
by EDMUND OLLIER.

Map, Battersea to London Bridge, Battersea Bridge, Engraving: Battersea Bridge, A City River, Battersea, Chelsea, Engraving: Cheyne Walk, Chelsea Church, Chelsea Life, Chelsea Physic Garden, Chelsea Hospital, Chelsea Suspension Bridge, Victoria Railway Bridge, Pimlico, Engraving: Vauxhall Bridge, Vauxhall, Lambeth, [Lambeth Bridge], Engraving: Lambeth Palace and Church, Lambeth Palace, Houses of Parliament, Engraving: Houses of Parliament, Victoria Tower, Westminster Abbey, Engraving: Westminster Abbey from Lambeth Bridge, Westminster Hall, Westminster Bridge, Victoria Embankment, Engraving: Victoria Embankment, Engraving: York Gate, York Gate, The Temple, Blackfriars Bridge, Engraving: Blackfriars, Blackfriars Railway Bridge, Warehouses, Engraving: St Paul's from the Thames, St Paul's Cathedral, Engraving: Southwark Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Southwark, Globe Theatre, Engraving: Cannon Street Railway Station, Cannon Street Railway Station, London Bridge

CHAPTER 11 LONDON BRIDGE TO GRAVESEND
by AARON WATSON.

Map: London Bridge to Woolwich, London Bridge Currents, Hogarth's Water Frolic, Picture: Hogarth's Water Frolic, [Tower Bridge], Docks, In Days of Sail, Engraving: Pool of London, In Praise of the Pool, St Magnus' Church & Monument, , Engraving: Billingsgate early morning, Billingsgate, The Custom House, Tower Subway, Tower Hill, Trinity House, Engraving: The Tower of London, The Tower, Picture: [ Wyllie's picture of the Pool ], The Pool of London, Before the Docks, St Katharine's Dock, London Docks, Ratcliff Highway, The Thames Tunnel, Rotherhithe, Engraving: Limehouse Church, Wapping, Surrey Docks, Engraving: River below Wapping, Isle of Dogs, Engraving: Millwall, Millwall, Engraving: Millwall Docks, Millwall Docks, Engraving: West India Docks, West India Docks, Engraving: East India Docks, East India Docks, Deptford, River Ravensbourne, Greenwich Reach, Engraving: Greenwich Hospital, Greenwich Hospital, Engraving: View from Greenwich Park, Greenwich Park, River Lea, Victoria Docks, Engraving: Albert Docks, Albert Docks, Silver Town, Engraving: Woolwich Reach, Woolwich Reach, Map: Woolwich to Gravesend, Engraving: Woolwich, Woolwich, Woolwich Dockyard, Engraving: Woolwich Arsenal, Woolwich Arsenal, North Woolwich Gardens, The Warspite Training Ship, Engraving: Plumstead, Plumstead, Engraving: Dagenham Marshes, Dagenham Breach, Crossness, Northern Outfall Sewer, Engraving: Barking Abbey, Barking Abbey, Engraving: Barking (Tripcock) Reach, Tripcock Reach, Barking Reach, Engraving: Purfleet, Purfleet, Training Ships, Engraving: Erith Pier, Erith, River Darent, River Cray, Long Reach Tavern, Ingress Abbey, Greenhithe, Tilbury, Engraving: Tilbury Fort, Tilbury Fort, Engraving: Gravesend, Gravesend, Engraving: At Gravesend, Whitebait, Gravesend Reach

CHAPTER 12 GRAVESEND TO THE NORE
by J. RUNCIMAN.

Map: Gravesend to the Nore, GRAVESEND, Pilots, Watermen, Tilbury Fort, Cliffe Marshes, Wild Fowl Shooting, Types of Boats, Eel Boats, Engraving: At Canvey Island, Canvey Island, Engraving: Fringe of Canvey Island Marshes, Canvey Island Birds, Visiting Canvey Island, Engraving: Hadleigh Castle, Hadleigh Castle, Engraving: Leigh, Leigh, Engraving: Southend and the Pier, Southend, Engraving: Sheerness Dockyard, looking up the Medway, Sheerness, Engraving: Sheerness Dockyard, from the River, Mutiny at the Nore, The Nore, Engraving: Artillery Practice at Shoeburyness, Engraving: Outward Bound - Passing the Nore Light

---

CHAPTER 1: Above Oxford by W. Senior

Map Sources of Thames, Thames Head, Engraving: Thames Head, Isis or Thames?, Thames Head or Seven Springs?, Seven Springs, Engraving: Seven Springs, River Churn, Thames and Severn Canal, Engraving: First Bridge Over The Thames, Thames Head Stream, Cricklade, Engraving: Cricklade, Castle Eaton, Kempsford, Inglesham, Inglesham Round House, Engraving: Inglesham Round House, Lechlade, St John's Lock, Engraving: St John's Lock, Buscot, Hart's Weir, Radcot Bridge, Engraving: Radcot Bridge, Rushy Lock, Tadpole Bridge, Ten Foot Weir, Duxford Ferry, Shifford Ferry, River Windrush, New Bridge, Langley or Ridges Weir, and Ark or Noah's Ark Weir, Bablock Hythe, Engraving: Bablock Hythe, Cumnor, Engraving: Cumnor, Stanton Harcourt, Stanton Harcourt Church, Engraving: Stanton Harcourt Church, Skinner's Weir, Pinkhill Lock, Eynsham Bridge, River Evenlode, Witham Hill, Hagley Pool, Godstow Bridge, Godstow Nunnery, Godstow Bridge and The Trout Inn, Port Meadow, Medley Weir and Footbridge, Osney.

THAMES HEAD WTSWG

The birds, flowers, and bees around are, doubtless, in their several ways, rejoicing with me in the balmy May morning radiant with warm sunshine. Down the insulated emerald of the little slope yonder, carpeted with nodding cowslips,daisies, and buttercups, and faintly azure in sheltered spaces with wild hyacinths I have descended into a rustic glade, not, at its widest, more than fifty yards across, and running, Roughly reckoning, north and south.
The slope is easy, springing as it does from a verdant bottom to the foot of a low wall; this, pushing aside the glossy sycamore branches, I have leaped from the Canal path, at a gap where the village children, on their recent half-holiday, wastefully cast aside the surplus of their cowslip harvest to wither and die.
But from my present standpoint the low wall is nearly hidden in undergrowth, and by a plentiful intermixture of hawthorn, holly, and ash flourishing on the bank top.
The sweet-smelling grass is spangled with daisies and buttercups, though not so profusely as in the field adjacent, which is destined for a crop of hay; and the grove resounds with bird-music set in the rapturous key of the bridal season. And there, a few paces athwart the sward, under the shadow of trembling foliage, is the spot which for centuries was said to be the birthplace of the River Thames.

Thames Head

We are at Thames Head, in Trewsbury Mead, in the parish of Cotes, in the county of Gloucestershire, three miles south-west of Cirencester.
The mossy trunk, lying prostrate under the wall on the side of the glade opposite the sylvan slope by which entrance has been effected, invites the opportunity of a more minute observation. Seated thereupon, far from the noisy world, we may make a fair and leisurely start upon that long and interesting voyage from source to Sea, upon which, in this and succeeding chapters, the reader is invited to embark with confidence aud hope.
Here, probably, is the identical spot which Peacock, author of the "Genius of the Thames", had in his mind when he wrote -

Let fancy lead from Trewsbury mead,
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep;
Where, scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep.

The friendly branches of a wild rose hustle my elbow, or, rather, would do so, but that a sturdier bramble bough interposes.
On the other side of me there is a charming tangle of hazel and blackberry bushes.
There is also a more than commonly bushy hawthorn overspreading the wall at a portion where thick ivy covers it.
A spreading wild rose is established in the very middle of the glade, which is graced with quite an unusual quantity of large and old hawthorn trees.
A strong west wind soughs and sighs in the trees; blackbirds and throstles, by their liquid. notes, blithe and merry, seem to protest against the melancholy undertone, as does a grand humble bee, in magnificent orange-velvet smallclothes, who contributes a sympathetic bass solo as he drones by.
But the object to be chiefly noticed at this moment is the aged ash-tree yonder.
It is of medium size and no particular shape, though the ivy covering its bole and lower limbs gives it an air of picturesque importance.
Ragged hawthorns and brambles surround it. The importance of the tree lies in the circumstance that it marks the spot which the old writers, and many modern authorities following in their footsteps, have pronounced to be the source of the Thames.
The supposition is that in former times a perennial spring of water issued forth here, forming Thames Head.
The well, however, out of which the water might once have gushed, and miscellaneously overspread the pasturage on its way to form a brook, has in these days lost potency.
For a long time past it has ceased to yield water, and, as a matter of prosaic fact, from one end of the glade to the other, there is no sign of water in any shape or form.
The inhabitants of the countryside say that in the winter-time the waters, provoked by long rains, still well forth in copious flood; but, even granting this, we may not conclude that a spring so uncertain as this in Trewsbury Mead is the source of the Thames.
The obvious reflection is that before the erection of the ugly pump-house which disfigures the locality, and before the neighbouring springs began to be drained for the service of the Canal, the supply of water was permanent and strong, albeit there is ground for supposing that Thames Head was never thoroughly to be relied upon.
I have thus pictured for the reader the source which appears to be favoured by topographers and antiquarians; but there are other springs besides.
Half a mile lower down there is, near the Roman way, a basin - another Thames Head which is sometimes filled by a spring, and which is pictured on the next page in the precise condition in which it appeared to our artist during the rains of early spring.
Yet another rill issues from a hill-side; and a fourth, lower still, is perhaps the most clearly defined and strongest of the group, and best entitled to the honour claimed on behalf of the dried-up well in the green glade just described.
The Thames Head district seems, indeed., to abound in springs, and in wet weather the level ground is probably freely intersected by brooklets, forming the stream which is the undoubted head of Tsis, and which has been called the Thames from time immemorial.
On the very threshold of our task we are confronted, indeed, with two some-time-disputed points which it will be necessary to clear away, or come to terms with, if we would. proceed upon our voyage of some two hundred miles from source to Nore with a clear conscience.
They relate, first, to the name of the river; and second, to the precise spot in the Cotswold country where it starts upon its wanderings. Neither of these controversial subjects shall, however, detain us long from an intimate acquaintance with the "mighty king of all the British river's, superior to most in beauty, and to all in importance", setting forth on its career in humble smallness, gathering tranquil vollume as it flows in succession through the fertile counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Middlesex, Kent, aud Essex, and finally delivering its full tribute to the Northern Ocean.
What rare historical memories it evokes, what varieties of landscape it touches and creates, let the following lines describe:

The blood-stain'd scourge no tyrants wield,
No graning slaves enrich the field,
But Health and Labour's willing train
Crowns all thy banks with waving grain;
With beauty decks thy sylvan shades,
With livelier green invest thy glades;
And grace, and bloom, and plenty pours
On thy sweet meads and willowy shres.
The fields where herds unnumber'd rove,
The laurell'd path, the beechen grove,
The oak, in lonely grandeur free,
Lord of the forest and the sea;
The spreading plain, the cultured hill,
The tranquill cot, the restless mill,
The lonely hamlet, calm and still;
The village spire, the busy town,
The shelving bank, the rising down,
The fisher's punt, the peasant's home,
The woodland seat, the regal dome,
In quick succession rise to charm
The mind, with virtuous feelings warm;
Till where thy widening current glides,
To mingle with the turbid tides,
Thy spacious breast displays unfurl'd
The ensigns of th'assembled world.

ISIS or THAMES?

It is now generally accepted that, from times as remote as those which preceded the Conquest, the highest portion of the river was called the Thames.
The Saxon Chronicles so refer to it, and there ls no reason to suppose that the river crossed by the armies of Ethelwold and Canute on their expeditions into the land of Mercia was ever known by other name.
How, and when, the river from Cricklade to Oxford acquired the local name of Isis is not clear, but the idea was probably fairly started, through not invented, by Camden, who had pretty visions of the "marriage of the Tame and Isis".
"This" wrote he, is that Isis which afterwards joining with Tame, by adding the names together, is called Tamisis, chief of the British rivers, of which we may truly say, as ancient writers did of Euphrates ln the East, that it both plants and waters Britain."
It is sufficient for us now to recognise the fact that above Oxford the river is impartially spoken of, now as the Thames, and now as the Isis, and it is rather as a matter of convenience than of dogmatic purpose that I shall elect henceforth to use the older and more reasonable name - the Tameses of the Romans, the Temese of the Saxons, and the Thames of modern days.

THAMES HEAD or SEVEN SPRINGS? WTSWG

Equally fruitful of controversy has been the source of the Thames.
It has long been a question whether this grassy retreat, in which we are supposed to be lingering, to wit, Thames Head, in the parish of Cotes, near Cirencester, in the county of Gloucestershire, or Seven Springs, near Cheltenham, should be regarded as the actual starting-point of the river.
Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and different portions of each, have occasionally contended for the honour.
Many pages might be filled with rehearsals of learned argument, and quotations from ancient authorities, to support conflicting contentions; but I shall presently invite the reader to follow the course suggested in regard to the name, and make an arbitrary law unto himself.
It is not to be denied that the balance of acceptation by topographers of olden times pointed to Thames Head as the generally received source.
Leland, sometimes called the Father of English Antiquaries, settles it thus: -
"Isis riseth at 3 myles from Cirencestre, not far from a village called Kemble, within half a mile of the Fosse-way, wher the very hed of Isis ys.
In a great somer drought there appereth very little or no water, yet is the stream servid with many of springes resorting to one botom."
Ill, therefore, will fare the visitor to Thames Head, who seeks it, as I have done, full of poetical fancies and pretty conceits about the source of rivers in general, and the birthplace of the famous English stream in particular.
However charming he may find the place to be, and charming it certainly is, he will be doomed to disappointment if he thinks he has reached the source of our royal stream.
I was bound for the identical spot, as I congratulated myself, where

From his oozy bed
Old Father Thames advanced his rev'rend head,
His tresses dropped with dews, and o'er the stream
His sluicing horns diffused a golden gleam.

As we have seen, the explorer will, at first, experience failure in his endeavour to find, with any satisfactory clearness, either old Father Thames or his oozy bed.
Arrived at the ancient Akeman Street, or Fosse-way, "3 myles" from Cirencester, a choice of no fewer than four springs is presented.
The village of Cotes, the Roman mound known as Trewsbury Castle, Trewsbury Mead, and the unromantic chimney of the Thames and Severn Canal Engine-house are plain enough, here and there - landmarks, all of them, for the industrious searcher, but there is no sign of flowing water, or, indeed, of water in repose.
You will look in vain for semblance of a bed which might be that of a river.
It was only after considerable trouble that I obtained any information, and was guided to this well, named by tradition as the original and primary source of the Thames, and reached by proceeding for a quarter of a mile from the high road (where it crosses the railway) along the walk bordering the Canal.

SEVEN SPRINGS WTSWG

Seven Springs

The reader, however, is hereby invited to regard, not Thames Head, but Seven Sprlngs near Cheltenham, as the natural and common-sense source of the river Thames.
Some three miles south of the town, in the parish of Cubberley, or Coberley, to quote the words of professor Ramsay,
"the Thames rises not far from the crest of the oolitic escarpment of the Cotswold Hllls that overlook the Severn".
After pausing on the shoulder of Charlton Hlll, and admiring - as who can fail to do? - the magnificent panorama of hill and valley receding into the mist of distance north and north-east, you proceed from Cheltenham along the Cirencester road to the crossways
A short divergence to the right, and a dip ln the road brings you to a piece of wayside turf, with, beyond, a corner shaped like an irregular triangle.
One side of this might be, perhaps, seven yards in lengths, another four yards, and the third something between the two.
The triangular depression is reached by one of those little green hillocks so often to be found on Engllsh waysides.
The bottom is covered with water, which, in spite of the place being no-man's-land, is clear as crystal, and in its deepest part there was not, at the time of my vlslt, more than six inches of water.
The bed of this open shallow reservoir is not paved with marble, or even concrete, but is liberally provided with such unconsidered trifles as the weather or playful childen would cast there.
When the wind sets that way a good deal of scum will gather ln the farther corner, formed by two walls.
The turf near the water's edge is worn away, and the green hillock has been trodden into a mere clay bank by the feet of cattle and men, for it is, as I have said, a patch of common land abutting upon the road.
Overhead, stretched from the telegraphy posts, you may count nine unmistakable wires parallel with the wall which forms the base of our triangle>
On the side farthest from the road the bank is high.
A venerable hawthorn has become wedded apparently to an equally venerable ash, whose topmost boughes coquette at close quarters with the telegraphy wires.
Another ash-tree, at the outer point of the triangle, leans over the water.
Between the trees a little sloe bush keeps study foothold.
You may mark, moreover, a few straggling briars, bits of silver-weed, a root or two of the meadow cranesbill, a clump of poverty-stricken meadow-sweet, some fool's parsley, wild strawberry plants, and a good deal of bold and always flourishing dandelion.
This is the environment of the true source of the great River Thames.
We are at Seven Springs.
Hence multitudinous initials are rudely carved upon the old trees and on the stone walls, hence strangers, during summer drive hither and pay homage.
Clear away the scum from the water at the foot of the wall and a small iron grating explains how the waters, always bubbling clear and cool from the Seven Springs, pass away.
On the other side of the wall the inflow forms a pond in private grounds.
Thence it descends by a homely fall into a smaller pond, and by yet another insignificant fall into what for some distance is sometimes little better than a stagnant ditch.
A lower fall, however, of more determined character than the others, sets in motion a clear rill, which, though tiny in volume and unpretentious in present aims, sets off upon its gravelly course as if it knew that by-and-by it would form an estuary upon which the navies of the world might ride in safety.
Just now a child might leap across. It is a mere thread of water, yet the streamlet begins at once to proceed in a business-like way under the solid hedgerows separating the fields, and soon becomes a decided brook.
This is a tangible beginning, at all events.
The Seven Springs are on evidence in a convenient enclosure; they may be recognised as, silently sparkling, they gush from the bank which gives foothold to the hawthorn and ash; and the infant river is always in sight from the moment it assumes the form of a tiny streamlet.

It is difficult to conceive how it has come about that Thames Head on the one part and Seven Springs on the other have been considered rival claimants for 1 the honour of being the cradle of the Thames.
Tt is true that both streams (for Thames Head eventually, by sundry means, becomes a stream) rise from the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds; but they are many miles apart, and Thames heads is nearly fifteen miles nearer the sea than Seven Springs.
The rivulet issuing from Seven Springs, and which presently becomes the River Churn is, in the present day at least, the distinct stream which continues its unbroken course to the Nore, and it is the source which is farthest from the mouth of the Thames.
Leland, nevertheless, writing at the time of Henry VIII., fixes, as we have seen, upon Thames Head as the source.
Stow, with less detail, adopts the same locality; Camden does likewise; Atkins declares that the river riseth in the parish of Cotes; Rudder that it has been reputed "to rise in the parish of Cotes, out of a well".
Modern tourists regularly visit both places, and in great numbers, during the summer season, and in the case of Thames Head are probably taken now to the uppermost glade, which I have described, and now to the spring nearer the engine-house of the Thames and Severn Canal, represented by the illustration.
The neglect of the alleged sources by the local authorities of both Cirencester and Cheltenham is to be explained, probably, on the old principle, that what is everybody's is nobody's business.
Since, however, people go in full faith to both Seven Springs and Thames Head some record, however simple, might surely be upraised at both for the enlightenment of the wayfaring man.
Dealing with this question at more length perhaps than the subject requires, I may be allowed to repeat that in these days there ought to be no manner of doubt that the natural and legitimate source of the Thames is that shallow, neglected, triangular pool formed by the Seven Springs.
The Cotswold Hills are, in any case, above dispute as the cradle-ground of the river, and may be happy with either claimant.

But Cotswold, be this spoke to th'onely praise of thee,
That thou, of all the rest, the chosen soyle should bee,
Faire Isis to bring forth, the mother of great Tames,
With whose delicious brooks, by whose immortal streames
Her greatnesse is begun.

THE RIVER CHURN WTSWG

Following the fortunes of the Seven Springs you naturally enter with some degree of zeal into an expedition down the River Churn, and this you are able to do without losing sight of the excellent road between Cheltenham and Cirencester.
The pretty little dancing trout stream runs hard by the highway, mostly through a succession of beautiful estates, and generally thickly overhung with alders and other bushes.
Drayton hit off the character of the stream most accurately in calling it the "nimble-footed Churn"; and its picturesqueness, and musical flow between the wooden hills and through the fat meadows, as we near Cirencester, appeal to us, even on the score of sentiment.
Surely it is more pleasant to identify this as the Thames than that commonplace current proceeding from the Thames Head series of springs.
There is no necessity, however, to trace in detail the course of the beck-like Churn, by wooded uplands teeming with game, and through rustic villages and sequestered grounds.
It runs through Rendcombe to North Cerney, down by Baunton, and through the once famous and still interesting town of Cirencester.
The Fosse-way mentioned in connection with Thames Head was one of three great Roman roads which meet here.
Mentioned. by Roman historians as Corinium ands Cornovium, the strongly fortified city of Cirencester, the metropolis of a Roman province was, there is reason for believing, a considerable British town before it became a Roman centre.
In the time of Henry VIII. the Roman wall surrounding the city might yet be traced, and, as the histories of Gloucestershire show, many Roman remains have from time to time been discovered here.
The Churn sustains its brook-like character alongside the Cricklade road by Addington, South Cerney, and Hailstone Hill, and then within a mile of the town of Cricklade it unites with the other Branch issuing from Thames Head., to which it is necessary briefly to return, in order to administer to it the justice already bestowed upon what we have agreed to regard as the rightful heir, namely, the Seven Springs stream, or River Churn.

THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL

The Thames and Severn Canal is so intimately associated with Thames Head, and so dominates that particular part of the country, that a few words respecting it may be spared.
Indeed, it has dealings, directly or indirectly, with the Churn as well as with the Thames Head stream.
Not far from Trewsbury Mead it gives a position to Thames Head Bridge, and the Canal lies within a few yards of the traditional spring.
The first tributary is formed by a spring issuing from beneath the aqueduct, and not far from the Canal stands the single-arch watercourse, here illustrated as practically the first bridge over the Thames.

The First Bridge over the Thames WTSWG

The course of the Canal, however, almost immediately bears eastward, until it strikes the Churn, near which it keeps during the remainder of its independent career.
The Thames and Severn Canal ls an interesting fact which the present generation is ln danger of forgetting.
For many years the junction of "fair Sabrina" with "lordly Thames" was a burning question in the commercial worlds of London and Bristol.
The merchants were much fascinated with the speculations in which they indulged.
The Canal scheme was launched in a Bill in the reign of Charles II., and Mr Hydrographer Moxon was engaged to survey the ground and prove to what extent the project was practicable.
Pope, in the grandiloquent language of the time, in a famous letter written at Oakley, Lord Bathurst's country house at Cirencester, said,
"I could pass whole days in describing the future and as yet visionary beauties that are to rise in these scenes.
The palace that is to be built, the pavilions that are to glitter, the colonnades that are to adorn them, nay, more, the meeting of the Thames and Severn, which, when the noble owner has finer dreams than ordinary, are to be led into each other's embraces, through secret caverns of not above twelve to fifteen miles, till they rise and celebrate their marriage in the midst of an immense amphitheatre, which is to be the admiration of posterity a hundred years hence."
The Canal was completed sixty-eight years after this dream was indulged in, and, in December, 1790, the first Canal boat, laden with coals, passed through.
The Canal is a continuation of the Stroudwater system from the Severn to Wallbridge, neart Stroud, and runs ln a devious course from that point to Lechlade.
It is thirty miles long, forty-two feet broad at the top, and thirty feet at the bottom.
Between Stroud and Sapperton the water is raised 241 feet in less than eight miles by means of locks.

THE THAMES HEAD STREAM WTSWG

Returning now to the lower spring of the Thames Head group, the course of this branch of the river may be traced from the expanded water giving growth to the ancient watercress bed, and receiving its first modest tributary rill from the spring proceeding from under the Canal aqueduct.
Hence the brook meanders through meadows and, near the railway, passes under the roadway.
The village of Kemble lies half a mile back, and the stream passes under and alongside the road from Kemble to Ewen, beneath a considerable culvert, or trio of culverts.
The first mill on the Thames was, in former times, at Ewen; but a cosy farmhouse now occupies the site, and the water which in former days set the drowsy wheel in motion is turned aside for sheep-washing purposes.
The first mill now is Somerford Upper Mill, with its pretty setting of elm-trees, and charming rural surroundings.
Somerford Keynes, on the elevated ground to the left was bestowed. as a marriage gift upon Ralph de Kaineto by Henry I., and an ancient charter granted to the Abbot Aldhelm of Malmesbury contains the following incidental reference to the river as the Thames:-
"Cujus vocabulum Temis juxta vadum qui appellatur Somerford."
Throughout the varied and interesting voyage upon which we are embarked the spires and towers of churches will be ever present, graceful and welcome features of many a landscape, now set upon a hill like a city which cannot be hid, now half concealed by mantling ivies, and shunning observation amongst the rugged elms which shelter their roofs and windows.
The square tower of venerable All saints Somerford Keynes, is one of the earliest to claim attention as a typical parish church of rural England, very dignified in its age, and in its maternal relation to the cottages around the churchyard.
The stream not far below this point serves another rustic mill, and a noticeable object later on is a homely foot-bridge supported by upright slabs of stone.
At Ashton Keynes there are sundry small bridges spanning the current, soon to be sensibly increased in depth and width by Swill Brook, whose proportions have for the last mile of its course been not inferior to those of the Thames Head stream.
The young River Thames was once, as is supposed, navigable to Water Hay Bridge for boats of moderate size ; but this must have been before the aqueduct of the North Wilts Canal crossed it, or West Mill was built.

CRICKLADE WTSWG

The ancient town of Cricklade reconciles any differences, and eventually ends all disputes as to individual claimants, by affording the two branches an opportunity of uniting their forces a short distance below the bridge.
Here the Churn, from its north-western source, merges into the stream which has been always apparently called by the name of Thames.
In this district it formed. the boundary of the forest of Braden in the time of Canute.
James Thorne, in his accurately written "Rambles by Rivers", does no injustice to the town of Cricklade when he speaks of it as dull to look at, dull to live in, aud no less dull to talk about.
There is, indeed, little about which to talk in connection with it, though we may, in passing, smile on recalling Drayton's words in his "Polyolbion" -

Greeklade whose great name yet vaunts that learned tongue
Where to Great Britain first the sacred Muses sung,
Who first were seated here at Isis' bounteous head,
As telling that her fame should through the world be spread.

It has been alleged by certain authorities that a college here, founded by a school of ancient philosophers, became famous for its Greek learning, aud hence the name of the town.
It has also been insisted that a few miles down the river a rival college, maintained with similar success in the Latin interests, gave a name to the community which lived under its learned shadow; or, as Fuller said,
"The Muses swam down the stream of the River Isis to be twenty miles nearer to the rising sun."
In this manner fanciful writers have sought to explain the origin of the words Cricklade and Lechlade.
Cricklade is impoztant to lovers of the Thames as being the first definite station on its upper waters.
From the southern watershed come, besides the Swill Brook, the Dance and the Rey.
The last-named, a contribution from the range of hills around Swindon, has been thought worthy by a few enthusiasts of the distinction of contesting with Thames Head and Seven Springs the responsibilities of parentage.
The Thames passes under a plank bridge at Cricklade, and becomes very shallow before receiving the tributaries above indicated.
Thames tourists rarely push their explorations so high as Cricklade, which, other than two well-preserved specimens of fourteenth-century crosses (as is conjectured), and the prominent share in the landscape taken by St. Mary's Church and churchyard, as seen from Eisey footbridge, offers few attractions to the visitor.
The scenery of the river hereto, and in truth for many a mile to come, is of a pleasing order, yet on a small and unpretentious scale.
Farmhouses, with their surroundings of rick-yard and orchard; hamlets and villages in sleepy remove from the noisy world; a country house set in blooming gardens at odd intervals; pasture land and grain-fields, separated by old-fashioned hedges that are gay with flowers in spring and summer, with deeply-hued berries in the mellow autumn; - on every hand and. at every turn these form the landscape.
The river itself, so far, claims no particular notice, calls for no warmth of admiration.
It makes no noise, performs no astonishing feats, inspires no terrors, but steals tranquilly through the meadows, and silently flows by the plentiful rushes which, unmolested., protect its banks in these remote reaches.

CASTLE EATON WTSWG

Castle Eaton Bridge, over four miles below Cricklade town, is perhaps the centre of the best of the rural scenery of this district, but it demands no special pause.

KEMPSFORD WTSWG

The church tower, which shows boldly above the meadow, two miles farther on, belongs to Kempsford.
King Harold was once a property-owner here.
William the Conqueror subsequently gave the manor to one of his Norman soldiers, and, as was not uncommon in early days, it ultimately fell into possession of Mother Church by whom at the time of dissolution it was disgorged and granted to the Thynne family.
The edifice upon the riverside was probably built in the fourteenth century.
There was also a castle at Kempsford, of which a fragment of window and a bit of wall remain, and a portion of the tower known as the Gunners' Room.
The occupants of the Gunners' Room, when the building was habitable, had the advantage of looking out upon the river.
A horseshoe nailed to the church-door long sustained the legend that when powerful Henry, Duke of Lancaster, the builder of the church, was quitting the place for ever, his horse cast a shoe, which the inhabitants nailed up in proud remembrance of the honour.
The traces of an old weir, as we proceed downwards with such speed as the thickets of reeds and weeds will allow, if we are attempting the passage in a boat, remind us that in days when even inconsiderable streams were valuable as highways for barge and boat traffic the channel of the Thames was not so neglected as it will in these days be found.
In other respects also its character has doubtless changed, as indicated by the stepping-stones across the foundation of the weir-sill, upon which the passenger, during summer level, may step dryshod from bank to bank.
Below Hannington Bridge WTSWG (with Highworth Church in the distance), the rushy pool, almost choked up with aquatic growths, still bears the name of Ham Weir.
A sharp northerly bend in the river opposite the village of Upper Inglesham marks the separating-point of Berks and Wilts.
Born in Gloucestershire) the Thames has latterly diverged for a brief excursion into Wilts, but now returns again, and from Kempsford until, a few miles onward, Oxfordshire is entered, it is the boundary between Gloucestershize and the southern counties of Wilts and Berks.
The River Cole joins the Thames on the eastern bank.
The little stream, in a charming Berkshire valley lying south, has given a name to Lord Radnor's mansion, Coleshill, famous as a perfect specimen of the style of Inigo Jones, and it arrives, accordingly, with some degree of repute on its own account.

INGLESHAM WTSWG

For many years the highest weir upon the Thames was at Inglesham, known for the picturesque church, with its bell-turret overlooking the river, and the remarkable piece of carved stone in the porch wall, but of more interest to us as the meeting place of the Coln, the Thames and Severn Canal, and the Thames.
The Canal we have already glanced at.
The Coln is a trout stream of some value, but it receives its fame principally from association with the town of Fairford; and Fairford is famous because of the painted church windows supposed to have been designed by Albert Durer.

INGLESHAM ROUNDHOUSE WTSWG

Inglesham Round House

The Round House at Inglesham is the final lock-house of the Thames and Severn Canal, and it indicates the stage at which the Thames becomes a river of importance.
It is broader and deeper than heretofore, and was once navigable for barges of from thirty to seventy tons burden, drawing four feet of water; but a channel of such proportions has not existed for many years, and the river threatens to lose all pretensions to a waterway before long, unless its guardians dredge to more purpose than they have done in recent years.
Once upon a time, when the ports of Bristol and London were not connected by railway, there was constant traffic through Inglesham Lock, and the Round House was a conspicuous beacon for the bargees of the period; but the lock-keeper's berth has, it is needless to explain, in modern days become a sinecure. The angler at this meeting of the waters is the gainer, and his practised eye will mark the juncture as a probable haunt of the voracious pike.

LECHLADE WTSWG

The Highworth road. is carried by a substantial one-arch bridge (to the left of the compass of the illustration on the next page) over the river at Lechlade, and in the fields, half a mile below, we arrive at the first lock on the Thames.
There are a lock-house and garden to rest in, Thames Conservancy notices to be read, and ancient lock-keeping folk to talk with.
It is a very old lock.
In the natural order of things it cannot last much longer, and at no distant date, no doubt, it will give place to one of the more useful, but infinitely more prosaic, affairs of iron, with modern improvements in the machinery, which the Conservancy supplies when it is necessary to replace the original structures.
The partly-decayed boards, the hand-rail rising from their outer edge, the lock gated patched many a time, and thinned in regard to their outer casing by many a winter flood, have done their work, and stand in weather-worn picturesqueness, all awry, doing their remaining duty as best they may.
Looking westward, the spire of Lechlade Church, and, indeed, its tower and the greater part of the body of the building, shaded with ivy, make a very harmonious object of middle distance.
The village, neat, substantial, and. mature, rallies round it, with woods extending on either hand, and at its left flank stands the well-built, arched structure, which may be said to be the first bridge worthy of the name upon the river.
It will be, perhaps, half a mile from the lock to the bridge, as the crow flies, but the Thames winds among the flat meadows in serpentine twists.
Still farther on the line of the horizon, as, seated on the lever-beam used for opening the lock, we look westward, is a little picket of six poplars, marking the whereabouts of the solitary Round House, which substantially marks the limit of the navigable part of the Thames.
The scene, thus comprising wolds, village, church, bridge, and the long line of low trees terminated by poplars, is peculiarly English, and of a character that we shall see reproduced in endless variety - every prospect pleasing - until the last lock is reached at Teddington.
But this is the first lock, 144 miles from London Bridge, and 125 from Teddington weir.
Between the two there are many subjects of interest;

ST JOHN'S LOCK WTSWG

but there is only one first lock, and upon this we may bestow closer attention than common.

Lechlade, the first lock [St John's Lock]

In the meadow is a big hawthorn on which the hips are already forming, and on a hot summer day the dairy kine will find shelter, lazily flicking the flies from their hides.
Haycocks are plentiful on all sides.
Yonder the men are hoisting a load of sweet-smelling hay upon the rick.
Farther in the distance a late crop is falling in regular swathes; and when the gurgle of the water escaping from the dilapidated lock-gales moderates for a moment we can hear the mower whetting his scythe. The meadow upon which the first Thames Conservancy notice board has been erected, opposite the neat lock cottage, has not, it seems, been laid down for hay this year, and. so offers a variety for the satisfaction of the artistic eye - to wit, masses of newly-shorn sheep lying on the grass, and dappled kine steadily feeding, what time the swallows and swifts are hawking around, and small birds warble in the reeds.
The Thames hereabouts, spite of prevailing officialism, is very modest. At the period of my last visit (the dog days of 1885) I find that there have been no floods for eighteen months; and the river, as our boatman puts it, has long wanted washing out.
In its widest part in the neighbourhood of the first lock it is not more than twenty yards from bank to bank, and on each side there are thick margins of bullbush, sedge, and flag.
The water is fairly deep, but cumbered with masses of weeds, out of which spring the tall rank stems of water-parsnip, while here and there small, compact, yellow water-lilies gleam like moidures on a silver plate.
The river runs parallel with the lock channel under St. John's Bridge, WTSWG a comparatively new and good-looking structure of one arch. It is about a mile from the town of Lechlade, and near it is the old-fashioned "Trout" Inn, WTSWG still maintaining all the homely characteristics of the English countryside inn.
A great sycamore overshadows it; there is an old-fashioned garden at the rear, and its little orchard, with a noble walnut-tree in the centre, offers a pathway to the pool.
There is something in the semblance of a weir at St. John's Bridge, though it is of the most rudimentary kind, having fallen naturally into decay, and even into desuetude.
Still, the small sluices are occasionally lifted, and serviceable streams are formed to keep the pool in motion, and prevent the patriarchal trout from giving notice to quit.
At the end of St. John's Bridge tradition places the priory of Black Canons, but of this there is no more substantial record than that of ink and paper.

RIVER LECH WTSWG

A few yards beyond the garden, on the RIGHT * bank, the River Lech creeps into the Thames.
[* Throughout, the bank names have been reluctantly changed to the modern convention to prevent confusion. The Environment Agency see the banks as proceeding upstream from Sea to Source ]
The regulation towpath exists from this point downwards, but for miles to come it is like the boundaries of counties, a generally invisible line.
The path is never trampled by horses, since barge traffic is unknown.
For the towage of pleasure boats it is occasionally used, through these upper regions are rarely indeed penetrated by tourists.
This is a pity ; for there are a quietude and utter rurality about the river from Lechlade till within the precincts of Oxford that will be looked for in vain upon the busier haunts.
Farther down there are glimpses - samples, so to speak - of what we have here in the bulk.
We shall here find none of those notable Thames scenes that have been written about and painted from the olden times to the present day.
Progressing from Lechlade downwards you feel altogether removed from the haunts of men.
A patient angler sitting in his home-made boat under the overhanging boughs of a tree you will occasionally pass, and the presence of labourers toiling in the meadows informs you that this is not wholly a sleepy hollow.
But river traffic, in the common meaning of the term, there is none.
For a whole day you will probably not meet a boat; and there is no necessity to sigh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, some boundless contiguity of space, seeing that you have so excellent a substitute at hand.
The solitude is, in truth, delightful. As you drop down between the banks you see drawn up in review order regiments of familiar friends - the dark glossy leaves of the water dock, bursting into seed in July; huge clumps of blue forget-me-nots that can only be plucked from a boat; ox-eyed daisies, well above high-water mark, gleaming as fixed stars in the floral firmament; the yellow flowering great watercress, the purple loose-strife beginning to blossom, yellow iris, the white flowers of the common watercress, the pink persicaria, meadowsweet, the comfreys, and sometimes a clump of arrowheads.
From one to another flits the superb dragon-fly: -

One almost fancies that such happy things,
With coloured hoods and richly-burnished wings,
Are fairy folk, in splendid masquerade
Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid;
Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,
Lest glaring day should do their secrets i11.

BUSCOT WTSWG

A mile and a half of winding and uniformly narrow river brings us to rare old Buscot.
The days of its weather-stained lock and weir are numbered too, but so long as they remain they will be, in conjunction, an object such as the artist loves, and a reminder to us all of other cldays when the world was not so jaded as now, when things were not so new, and when the ways of men were more primitive.
There is a very fine tumbling bay on the farther side of the weir, and a sharp sweep of swiftly-running water coursing over a gravelly shallow, upon which the trout come out to feed at eventide, and the silvery dace and bleak poise in happy security during the long summer days.
One is tempted naturally to land at the little village.
The square, solid, countryfied-looking church tower, surrounded by old trees, and approached through a flower-garden, suggests, as your boat pauses at the lock, that it will be better to spend a quarter of an hour afoot than in the tedious process of passing through.
Buscot is not a large or a pretentious place, but it is pleasant to look at, and deserves mention in passing, as giving name to the first weir of goodly size.
A particularly pretty bit of the river, winding, tree-lined, and narrow, is followeth by a long unromantic stretch.

HART'S WEIR WTSWG [ EATON FOOTBRIDGE ]

Quaint, time-honoured Hart's Weir is so little a weir that the ordinary boat shoots the open half on the strength of a miniature rapid representing, at a summer level of the river, a fall of three or four inches only.
The water there opens out into a wide bay that is purling rather than tumbling; and this is succeeded, in the ordinary course of nature, by a silted-up shallow, densely covered in their season with the white, yellow-eyed blossoms of the water crowfoot.
Kelmscott on the north and Eaton Hastings on the south are the nearest villages.
The banks of the Thames are now clearly defined by those trees which love to spread their branches to a river.
The Thames does not, like the Loddon, encourage a monopoly of alder, but favours rather the familiar willow, the Lombardy poplar, and the plentiful hawthorn.
Clumps of old elms, most picturesque of English trees when standing on village green, or as a rear-guard to church or manor-house, vary the prospect.
White and red wild roses are plentiful in the higher reaches of the river, and every turn of the narrow stream offers new combinations of wood and field: -

No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
And of a wannish grey ; the willow such,
And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf,
And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm;
Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,
Lord of the woods, the long surviving oak.

After Hart's Weir the Thames settles down to an interval of insignificance.
There is an indescribably soothing influence exercised by a river in the soft mood which characterises the Thames throughout.
How pleasant it is to be simply moving with the current, which does so much and is heard so little.
Loud, even, by comparison with the murmur of the waters, is the sighing of the breezes amongst the shock heads of the willows, and the silver shiver of the poplars.
Under the spell of this influence the prosaic features of a reach like that between Hart's Weir and Radcot serve as a foil for the more lovely objects.
Besides, occasional descents from the higher platforms of admiration, to which special points of interest are apt to summon you, give time for reflection and observation.
Thus you will not be long in discovering that in these veritably upper reaches of the Thames what of animal life is still left may be seen without let or hindrance.
The birds here are in no danger from the cockney fowler's gun.
Amongst the water-fowl the most frequent appearance is that of the common moor-hen, which breeds as freely as ever, and still maintains its character as amongst the tamest of our wild birds.
The coot is less often seen, but the heron will be often disturbed from its busy occupation on the shallows.
Even in much-frequented reaches of the Thames the heron may still be descried at a distance, shy, watchful, and wary.
On both of the days occupied by my voyage from Lechlade to Oxford I saw herons.
They may have travelled twenty miles from the heronry for their nightly or early-morning forage, but you rarely can approach them within gunshot.
The bird is most artful and shy at all times; but I have always fancied that the herons of the Thames Valley are the most wideawake of all.
They hear the thump, thump of the rowlocks half a mile off, rise from their deprecations, and wing their way slowly into the centre of a field; or perchance you may see one doing sentry on the upper boughs of a tall tree.
Between Hart's Weir and Radcot Bridge I descry three "herns" in one meadow that had been so disturbed by our gliding boat.
As they stalls motionless and lank in the fields, on a fence, or in the tree-tops, only a practised eye can identify them.
In summer-time, though rarely, you put up a couple of wild ducks from the main river.
The boating man, as may be supposed, meets with less bird life than the pedestrian, who, stealthily walking on the grass, will often obtain a passing flash of a kingfisher, or witness the alarmed flight of rarer birds.
My July voyage brings me into constant companionship with troops of the wanton lapwing, in glorious plumage and full of noisy life; rooks, as a matter of course, busy, self-satisfied, and radiant in their blue-black vesture; swallows, swifts, sand martins, and reed warblers.
The common sandpiper is about upon the shallows where the streams run swiftly, and the elegant water wagtails abound.
At intervals throughout the day, near shrubby undergrowths and open meadows, the music of skylark, thrush, or blackbird charms the ear, though the eye seeks in vain the whereabouts of the performers.
Four-footed creatures are few.
The merry vole is an exception, and in some of the woods the cautious searcher may find squirrels in active play.
The otter, seldom seen by the human eye in broad daylight, is plentiful enough in the earlier stages of the Thames, and of them, as of other wild creatures, it may be generally said that they are not so harried and wantonly destroyed, as in the middle and lower parts of the river.

[GRAFTON LOCK built 1896] WTSWG

RADCOT BRIDGE WTSWG

Radcot Bridge

Radcot Bridge, of which we catch sight three miles from Hart's Weir, is understood to be one of the oldest bridges on the Thames, and its appearance quite in character with this theory; moreover, it is an interesting piece of stonework, apart from its age, its three Gothic arches being curiously ribbed underneath.
There is a very steep ascent to the crown, and over the centre arch is still preserved the socket in which, on the crest of bridges, the sacred cross was wont to be uplifted.
There are, in point of fact, two bridges at Radcot, but the "real original" is the antique three-arched affair to the right, as we drop down.
The river is here divided, a short cut to facilitate navigation and deepen the channel forming a new departure. WTSWG
The old stream wanders round, when the weeds will allow it, under the ribbed arches, leaving the channel of the new cut, like a newly-come tradesman who has a contempt for the old-fogeyish methods of the ancient inhabitants, to transact its business merrily, with promptness and despatch.
For a couple of miles or so the Thames has now all the essential characteristics of a trout stream, with eddying pools and golden shallows, over which the water ripples at a moderate depth and at sparkling pace.
In the hands of patient fish culturists and preservers this portion of the river might be made, no doubt, a trout stream; but salmo fario is as yet the least abundant of Thames fishes.
What are called the coarse fish, or summer spawners, are on the contrary abundant, and most plentiful of all, under the willowy banks of the meadows, are the chub, which, for want of better game, afford passable sport to the fly-fisher, who, from the towpath, ought to be able to command any portion of the Thames at this stage of its course.
In the wide deep pools marking the sites of old weirs, of which little trace but the piers remain, there should be, and as a matter of fact is, excellent angling for perch and pike.
Because the Thames has been so much praised, and so much the subject of picture and poem, it does not follow that it is all pleasing to the eye.
After leaving Radcot Bridge, and with the exception of these pools, once foaming and noisy with the action of the descending water, some indifferently furnished reaches have to be passed reaches that are almost canal-like in the straightness of their course and in the uninteresting character of the low-lying lands on either side.

[ RADCOT LOCK built 1892 ] WTSWG

RUSHY LOCK WTSWG

The country immediately bordering on the river is sparsely populated, and the world must revolve somewhat slowly for those who live there.
Some indication of this may be gathered from the fact that at Rushy Lock, where there is a fine weir and pool, we had the pleasure of being our own lock keeper, opening the heavy gates, letting in the water and releasing ourselves.
The labour accomplished a small urchin of six years of age was sharp enough to put in an appearance in time to take the toll; it was evident, however, that traffic was so unexpected that he alone had been left in charge.
Indeed during one whole day's progress we met but two boats.

TADPOLE BRIDGE WTSWG

Tadpole Bridge, a substantial structure of one span, between four and five miles below Radcot, carries the road from Bampton, where Phillips, the author of an almost forgotten work, "The Splendid Shilling", was born.
The singular spire of Bampton Church is seen from Radcot Bridge, the view from which also includes Faringdon Hill, and some effective wooded heights around.
The few tourists who make a pilgrimage from the source to the mouth of the Thames, or those who visit these stations for a sojourn of greater or lesser duration, turn aside frown the river and visit both Farringdon and Bampton.
At Farringdon any traces of the houses which withstood the hard knocks of the Cromwellian period are gone; nothing but the site remains, and that only as a vague tradition, of the castle built by the supporters of Queen Matilda, and pulled down by the supporters of King Stephen.
Sir Edward Unton, who was Queen Elizabeth's ambassador at the French Court, is buried in the church.
Bampton, on the Oxfordshire side, is half town and half village, and it has an indirect connection with the Thames, although it is sme distance from its banks, because the steeple, to which I have already referred, is a striking mark upon the landscape.
Not without reason has the character of singularity been applied to it.
From a square tower rises an octagon steeple, with belfry windows; pinnacles at each corner form basements of statues, and these are supported by slabs resting at right angles against the steeple.
Skelton says that the church contains examples of almost every period of architecture, from the Conquest to the reign of George III.
It has a fine Norman porch, all inner arch that is much admired, brasses, and a series of sculptures, probably work of the fifteenth century.
There is not much material for description in the next few miles.
The river seems occasionally to lessen rather than increase in side, and right and left you look in vain for anything worthy of inquiry or admiration, save the comfortable old farmhouses and homesteads, environed by the usual clump of characteristic elms; and, at farther distance from the river, here and there a country mansion, secure in the privacy of its trim park, suggesting always the happy language of the poetess: -

The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand,
Amid their tall ancestral trees o'er all the pleasant land.

It is not till you have passed below Tadpole Bridge that the first beds of white lilies challenge attention.
The lilies hitherto have been of the small yellow description; but now, in sheltered bays, thick beds of the gorgeous white variety shine gloriously from between the large glossy leaves.
They are, fortunately, out of the line of every-day Thames traffic, and are so spared to develop to maturity in waters to which the steam-launch has not yet penetrated.

TENFOOT [ FOOTBRIDGE ] WTSWG

About two miles below Tadpole one's attention cannot fail to be arrested by the high, skeleton-like, weather-worn bridge called Tenfoot Weir.
This is another site of a weir long fallen into disuse.
The wooden bridge consists of a central arch, or compartment, of staging set twenty feet high, with steep billets of steps on either side, the central division marking the outline of the old weir.
A thatched cottage and thickly clustering willows in the bend which is here formed by the course of the river present all extremely picturesque variety to the monotonous character of the previous mile of the Thames.

DUXFORD FERRY WTSWG

Another object of interest will be found a little lower down, at Duxford Ferry.
Alongside a clump of willows lies a "sheer hulk" representing one of the long, narrow canal boats used when barges regularly plied where there is no water to float them now.
Close to the blackened, slimy timbers of the wreck a promising family of calves cluster, as if pondering in bovine fancy over the former glories of the defunct craft and the industry it typified.
A comfortable group of farm-buildings, thatched and tiled, nestles at the head of the ferry, which is not furnished with the usual horse-boat, for the simple reason that it may be crossed without any such assistance.
A child might walk across on the hard gravelly shallow at ordinary times without being more than knee deep.
It is, however, more than twenty yards wide, and the stream concentrates immediately afterwards to a width of not more than twenty feet; but it remains shallow.

SHIFFFORD FERRY [SHIFFORD LOCK built 1896 ] WTSWG

There are two or three fords in the course of the next few miles, all of the same character.
A rather notable one is that at Shifford.
The legend runs that in the locality Alfred the Great held one of his earliest Parliaments, and there and then gathered "many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, proud earls, and awful knights".
This was to a great extent Canute's country.
A mile or two on the Berkshire side of the river, near Bucklands, is kept the Pusey horn, given to the family by that king.
The inscription upon it is,
"I, King Knoude, give William Pewse this horne to holde by thy londe".
There are some doubts, however, as to whether these letters are not of later date than the time of Canute.
At Longworth, another village, there are the remains of an ancient encampment, Cherbury Camp, and here, it; is said, a palace of Canute's once stood.

RIVER WINDRUSH WTSWG

The River Windrush, a more considerable tributary than any previously received by the Thames, flows into the parent river from the north at Newbridge.
The point of debouchment might, by reason of the weeds and rushes in the water and overhanging bushes of the banks, be easily overlooked by a casual observer, and the Windrush, in this peculiarity, closely resembles other feeders of the Thames, in looking its meanest where it offers its volume to the parent river.
The Windrush is one of the Cotswold brood, and at Bourton-on-the-Water it becomes a valuable trout stream.
Great Barrington, whose freestone quarry furnished the stone for Christopher Wren's restoration of Westminster Abbey, is opposite the village of Windrush; the river afterwards enters Oxfordshire, and by the peculiar quality of its waters gives to the town of Witney a special pre-eminence in the whiteness of the blankets produced by its fulling mills.
The river is thirty-five miles long from source to inlet to the Thames.

NEWBRIDGE WTSWG

The oldest, and in truth the oldest looking, stone bridge on the Thames is called Newbridge, and this we approach below the place where Alfred held his Parliament.
The bridge is an excellent sample of old English masonry.
It has been Newbridge for at least 600 years now, yet its groined arches and projecting piers seem as strong to-day as ever they have been.
A public-house accommodates the traveller on either side of the bridge, one of them replacing a mill that perished for lack of customers.
Strange to say, the river seems immediately to change its character when we have passed thorough these ancient arches.
Not only is the presence of a couple of working barges, with gaily-painted posts of primary colours and vivid figure-subjects painted upon the pannelling of the deck cabin aft, evidence that another era in the commercial character of the river is beginning, but the Thames, almost without warning, becomes wider and deeper, and altogether more like the Thames as we know it at the popular stations above the City boundaries, though of course it is still the Thames in miniature.
The barges come in these days no farther than this station, and their business is mostly one not unconnected with coal. These boats, moored near the old bridge, seem to remind us that although heretofore we might have cherished the fancy that the Thames was almost an idyllic trout stream, lending grace to a rural district, it must henceforth be considlered as being a recognised water highway with a mission that becomes more and. more important as the distance to London Bridge is lessened.
It is quite a remarkable change, and in a few moments your estimate of the river changes also.
It is a thing now of laws and regulations.
The very foliage on the banks seems to be of a more permanent character.
Hitherto the Thames has been struggling with an indefinite career before it, winding through the meadows, streaming over the shallows, not quite certain whether it was to have a respectable position or not.
But after Newbridge it has set up a substantial establishment, wherefore Isis though it still may be and is called by the good Oxford people - it is to all intents and purposes Old Father Thames.
We have seen the Seven Springs rill in its infancy aud the Thames in its boyhood and lusty youth; here, however, it enters upon its early manhood.
Opposite Harrowden Hill, and to the west of Newbridge, Standlake Common may be explored by whosoever would benefit by its attractions, which, truth to tell, are very scanty.
Snipe undoubtedly enjoy its boggy virtues during the winter; but the common is a marshy tract at best, and. those who pass on to the village for the sake of its church of Early English architecture, and the farmhouse said to be built by John o'Gaunt and Joan his wife, do not care to linger there.

[ NORTHMOOR LOCK opened in 1896 ] WTSWG

LANGLEY or RIDGES WEIR, and ARK or NOAH'S WEIR WTSWG

We shall pass two weir-pools, long disused, between Newbridge and Bablock Hythe, namely, Langley, or Ridge's Weir, and Ark, or Noah's Ark Weir.
These and previous weirs referred to are of the very simplest kind, and, except in the two instances mentioned, perform their service independently of a lock.
The object of this simple form of weir is to dam the river to the required height for such purposes as mill heads or navigation.
The business is accomplished. by the working of flood gates or paddles in grooves, and between rymers, to the sill at the bottom.
In winter there may be a swift stream through the weirs, but, the weir paddles being withdrawn, there is very little fall. Shooting the weir stream - one of the adventurous feats of the upper navigation - is an amusement unknown below Oxford, and at times it is not without its risks.

BABLOCK HYTHE WTSWG

The Ferry, Bablock Hythe

Although Bablock Hythe by road is not much more than five miles from Oxford, the circuitous voyage by Thames is twelve miles.
Bablock Hythe is a well-known station on the Upper Thames, albeit it does not boast the rank of hamlet or village, and has for the accommodation of man and beast only one of the small old-fashioned inns of the humblest sort, where the rooms are low, the beams big and solid, the floors flagged, and the apartments fitted up with all manner of three-corner cupboards and antique settles.
The great ferry-boat, however, gives it a decided position of importance, and it is known to Thames tourists principally as the starting-point for visiting either Cumnor or Stanton Harcourt.
Most people probably go to Cumnor from Oxford, the distance being only about three miles; but many are glad to make it an excuse for halting on the somewhat monotonous ascent of the river.

CUMNOR

Cumnor Church

The reader needs scarcely to be reminded that Cumnor Place has been made immortal by the pages of Sir Walter Scott, and that the sorrows of Amy Robsart have been wept over by the English-speaking race in all parts of the world.
There is an inn at Cumnor still called after that hostelry over which Giles Gosling firmly ruled, and in the church there is a monument sacred to the virtues of Tony Fire-the-fagot and his family, who are thus handed down to posterity in a far different character from that suggested by Sir Walter as pertaining to the tool of the villain Varney.
Cumnor is on the Berkshire side,

STANTON HARCOURT WTSWG

and on the Oxford side is Stanton Harcourt, visited for the sake of the remains of its ancient mansion, and its fine church.
> Visitors, probably, would not make the journey exclusively in the interests of either one or the other, nor of the two large upright stones called the Devil's Quoits, which one historian conjectures were erected to commemorate the battle fought in 614 between the Saxons and the Britons.
The real attraction of Stanton Harcourt is historical, and historical in several degrees.
It was one of the vast estates which fell as loot to the half-brother of William the Conqueror, and was evidently a considerable possession.
For more than 600 years the manor continued in the Harcourt family.
Little is left of the grand mansion in which the lords of Stanton Harcourt dwelt.
The Harcourt family gave it up as a place of residence towards the close of the seventeenth century, and it fell forthwith to decay.
With the exception of the porter's lodge, the arms on each side of the gate, showing that it was erected by Sir Simon Harcourt, who died in 1547, and some upper rooms in the small remaining part of the house adjoining the kitchen, are all that remain.
But there is a more recent historical interest attaching to Stanton Harcourt; in a habitable suite of rooms in the deserted mansion Pope passed the greater part of two summers, and to this day the principal apartment bears the name of Pope's study.
The little man required quiet and retirement during his translation of the Fifth Book of Homer, and upon one of the panes of glass he wrote, in the year 1718,
"Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volmne of Homer".
The Harcourts, however, removed this pane to Nuneham Courtney, where it is preserved - a piece of red stained glass, six inches by two.
The old Stanton Harcourt kitchen, converted to modern uses, was always a curiosity, and. Dr. Plott, the Oxford historian, says of it,
"It is so strangely unusual that, by way of riddle, one may truly call it either a kitchen within a chimney or a kitchen without one, for below it is nothing but a large square, and octangular above, ascending like a tower, the fires being made against the walls, and the smoke climbing up them without any tunnels or disturbance to the cooks, which, being stopped by a large conical roof at the top, goes out at loopholes on every side, according as how the wind sets, the loopholes at the side next the wind being shut by folding doors, and the adverse side opened.

STANTON HARCOURT CHURCH WTSWG

Stanton Harcourt Church

The visitor at Stanton Harcourt should certainly not neglect an inspection of the beautiful church, said to be the finest in the country.
It is cruciform in shape, and has a massive tower.
The nave is Norman, of about the twelfth century, and according to at"a custom established there time immemorial" the men entered through a large, and the women through a small, doorway.
A wooden roof to the nave is understood to have been added in the fourteenth century, while the chancel, transepts, and tower arches are of the thirteenth.
The oaken rood screen is reputed to be the oldest wooden partition of the kind in the country.
The Harcourt aisle or chapel, erected about the same time as the mansion, is an example of the enriched perpendicular style of Henry VII., and. it is still the burial-place of the ancient Harcourt family.
In the chapel, as in the body of the church, are several interesting monuments, and one of them is famous.
In Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments", where it is engraved, the following description is given: -
"This monument of Sir Robert Harcourt of that place, Knight of the Garter, ancestor of the Earl of Harcourt;
and Margaret his wife, daughter of Sir John Byron, of Clayton, Lancashire, Knight, ancestor of Lord Byron.
He was Sheriff of Lancashire and Warwickshire, 1445, elected Knight of the Garter 1463, commissioned with Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and others, to treat of a peace between Edward IV. and Louis XI. of France, 1467, and was slain on the part of the House of York, by the Staffords, of the Lancastrian party, November with, 1472.
His figure represents him in his hair, gorget of mail, plated armour, strapped at the elbows and wrists, large hilted sword at left side, dagger at right, his belt charged with oak leaves, hands bare, a kind of ruffle turned back at his wrists, shoes of scaled armour, order of Garter on left leg, and over all the mantle of the Garter, with a rich cape and cordon; his head reclines on a helmet, with his crest, a swan; at his feet a lion.
His lady, habited in a veil head-dress falling back, has a mantle and surcoat and cordon, and a kind of short apron, long sleeves fastened in a singular manner at the waist, and the Order of the Garter round her left arm; her feet are partly wrapped up in her mantle."

SKINNER'S WEIR

The Thames takes a northerly course from Bablock Hythe, and winds and. doubles in such contortions that in one part a strip of not more than twelve yards of meadow separates two reaches of considerable length.
A high, wide wooden bridge, bearing the name of Skinner's Weir, now crosses our course,

PINKHILL LOCK WTSWG

and soon we come to Pinkhill Lock, so called from a farm of that name in the neighbourhood.
The weir is a new one, a great contrast in its severe and formal cut to the weather-worn structures to which we have been accustomed.
The lock-house is quite a dainty cottage, and the garden one of the prettiest to be found along the Thames.
The lock garden is generally a winsome little preserve, with its kitchen garden, flower-beds, sometimes a beehive, its stack of fagots, and a general air of rusticity; but the lock-keeper, or probably his wife, at Pinkhill Weir has devoted special care and attention to a flower-bed running the whole length of the lock, which I found to be bordered by a blaze of summer flowers, prominent amongst which were white and blue cornflowers.
From the lock bridge a commanding view is obtained of the hilly country to the right [left bank], and the woods and copses around its base, and straggling to the top.

EYNSHAM [SWINFORD] BRIDGE WTSWG

The telegraph wires along Eynsham Road detract considerably from the rural flavour of the surroundings, and Eynsham Bridge itself does not look so old as it really is.
It is a very conspicuous, and, indeed, handsome structure, with eight arches and a liberal amount of balustrading in the central divisions of the parapets.
Eynsham, Ensham, Eynesham, or Emsham, has a history which goes beyond the Conquest, and it is by right, therefore, that the bridge is labelled after the village, though its real name, as decided by the Ordnance Map, is Swinford Bridge.
Early in the eleventh century an abbey was founded here by the then Earl of Cornwall, and Ethelred, the reigning king, signed the privilege of liberty with the sign of the holy cross.
At the Dissolution the abbey and its site passed into the ownership of the Stanley family, but no ruins have been preserved.
Ensham, or Eynsham Cross, stands in the market-place of the village, opposite the church.
The bridge, as we now see it, was built about sixty years ago.
[ Built 1777, (108 years before this was written. Perhaps a source from about 1837 was being quoted?) ]
The village is pleasantly situated on rising ground.
A little below the bridge the picturesque materials of the weir are stored when not in use, and the rimers are piled in a stack close to the spot where they sometimes even now do effective service.
Your boat passes through, however, generally without let or hindrance.

RIVER EVENLODE WTSWG

A little farther on the Evenlode enters the Thames. Like its predecessors, it seems a poor insignificant stream as it delivers its waters thorough a reedy mouth to the Thames; but it has itself received the River Glyme, which passes through Woodstock and Blenheim Park, and feeds the large lake, now choked with weeds.
The Evenlode is the last of the Cotswold offerings thus embodied in verse by Drayton: -

Clear Colne and lively Leech have down from Cotswold's plain,
At Lechlade linking hands, come likewise to support
The mother of great Thames. When, seeing the resort,
From Cotswold Windrush scrowers; and with herself doth cast
The train to overtake; and therefore hies her fast
Through the Oxfordian fields; when (as the last of all
Those floods that into Thames out of our Cotswold fall,
And farthest unto the north) bright Elnlode forth doth beare

WITHAM HILL

Woodstock is not more than four miles from Eynsham, but it is generally reached from Oxford.
The river winds now round the foot of Witham Hill, and we are on close terms with the outskirts of the immense wood through which one could walk for eight miles before losing its shade.
The portion that comes to within a few yards of the Thames consists of oak-trees, with an occasional ash, and as we halt to sit a while under the umbrageous canopy we receive as a salute the cooing of doves, agreeable contrast to the reception, a few miles higher up, conveyed in the harsh squawk of a couple of herons.
Longfellow might have sat amongst these identical brackens when he wrote: -

But when sultry suns are high,
Underneath the oak I lie,
As it shades the water's edge,
And I mark my line, away
In the wheeling eddy play,
Tangling with the river sedge.

The Thames describes a sharp horseshoe curve round the base of the hill.
From the bank a fine view across the flat is obtained of Cassington Church spire, and of the last mill on the River Evenlode, making for the Thames midway between the bridge and Hagley Pool.
The paucity of pleasure-boats on the river between Lechlade and Bablock Hythe may be attributed to the great weediness of the river, rendering it sometimes almost impassable; also to the prevalence of shallows, and the absence of anything particular to see, and the all-important consideration that there are few hotels to stop at.
There is not a riverside house of call between the little cottage inn at Bablock Hythe and Godstow.
An occasional steam-launch finds its way from Oxford up the Canal and into the Thames, by way of the Wolvercott Paper Mill; but this unpleasant type of vessel is very rarely seen so far up, since the forests of aquatic undergrowth are the reverse of favourable for the working of the screw.
What the steam-launcher, however, loses is gained by the angler.
This mild sportsman I found to be very much on evidence below Bablock Hythe.
Here at any rate he was able to pursue his pastime in peace; and the frequency with which he appeared on the bank from Eynsham downwards gives me an opportunity of interjecting a few timely remarks upon the Thames as a resort of fishermen.
The professional fisherman, as we know him at Richmond, Maidenhead, or Marlow, with his punt, Windsor chair, and ground-bait, is unknown in the upper reaches of the river; but the fish are there.
Although anglers have multiplied a hundredfold. within the last half century, the angling in the River Thames at the present moment is better than it has been at any time during the present generation. It is not to be hoped, with any reasonable confidence, that the efforts now being made by the Thames Angling Preservation Society to convert the Thames once more into a salmon river will be successful; and any one who makes personal acquaintance with the source of the Thames, and marks the character of the contributory streams, will be prudent in entertaining a doubt as to whether there are now breeding-grounds suitable, even if fish could be induced once more to run up thorough the filth of the Pool from the sea.
The alleged scarcity of Thames trout is very often put down to the excessive disturbance caused by steam-launches, and the traffic by pleasure-boats upon all the reaches of the Thames, from Teddington Lock to Oxford.
It is somewhat strange, therefore, that the higher you ascend the Thames the fewer become the Thames trout.
There are a few large fish in most of the deep wide pieces that were once weir-pools, or that still may be so, between Lechlade and Oxford; but the water is too sluggish to encourage them much, and trout, with the exception of truants from Lech, Coln, or Windrush, are, therefore, few and far between.
Pike, on the other hand, are more numerous, if not of so large an average size as those caught lower down.
The Thames, from the start, abounds in chub, bleak, barrel, gudgeon, roach, dace, and perch; bleak, carp, and tench are partial in their haunts.
But the river above Oxford is not so accessible as the great body of modern anglers would require, and hence it comes to pass that these remote waters are little visited except by the local disciples of Isaac Walton.
The weeds are, after a fashion, annually cut by the Thames Conservancy where their growths would be a serious hindrance, but otherwise they are not kept down, save by the uncertain operations of winter frosts and floods. The right of fishing is generally, above Oxford, claimed by the riparian proprietors, or their tenants.
Soon after putting Bablock Hythe in our wake, the flat country, varied by only occasional uplands, which had been the rule since leaving Lechlade, is exchanged for a bolder type of scenery, as, for example, the fine wooded eminence rising before us.
This is Witham, of which we shall see a good deal, now from one point, and now from another, as we near the City of Learning.
It requires no guide or guide-book to inform us that from the summit a widespread view is obtained of the valley of the Thames.
Hitherto we have looked in vain for the typical eyot.

HAGLEY POOL WTSWG

With the exception of one small islet below Hart's Number Two, or Langley Weir, there has been nothing in the shape of an island until we arrive at Hagley Pool, where the first solitary island appears.
The picture from here is exceptionally interesting.
A rustic bridge spans a back-water trending towards Witham Mill, and in the direction of Oxford.
The thickset woods stand out in prominent relief, aud another farmhouse of the higher class, surrounded by ricks, appears to the left [the right bank].
Hagley Pool, which is merely a lake-like widening of the water at the bend, is covered with the yellow water lilies.

[ KING'S WEIR only became KING'S LOCK in 1928 ] WTSWG

GODSTOW BRIDGE WTSWG

Three miles from Eynsham we are at Godstow Bridge.
The spire of Cassington Church, a conspicuous landmark on the left hand throughout, is a pleasanter object by far than the tall chimneys on the right, which are not redeemed by the rows of poplars that would fain hide them.
It is unfortunate, but true, that the first glimpses we get of the spires of Oxford are in conjunction with the tall red-brick chimney and not elegant University paper-mills.
While following the bend at the broad part of the river the public buildings of beautiful Oxford open one by one into view, but again disappear temporarily at the next bend, at the head. of which stands Kings Weir.
This serves as much the purposes of a lock as a weir, its gates opening when necessary to admit the passage of larger craft than those which can be conveyed over the rollers supplied for pleasure-boats.
The river from the pool for some distance is almost choked with weeds, very narrow, and of hardly sufficient depth at low water to admit the passage of an ordinary pleasure-boat.

GODSTOW NUNNERY WTSWG

Godstow at once suggests the story, often told and always interesting, of fair Rosamond. The lady gives a flavour also to Woodstock, some eight miles distant.
The wrongs and the rights of Mistress Rosamond will never in this world be accurately known, but that she was poisoned by jealous Queen Eleanor at Woodstock, and that she was the mistress of Queen Eleanor's husband, Henry II., are facts which no one dare deny.
According to Lord Lyttleton, Henry II. met the frail daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford at Godstow, in 1149, on his return from Carlisle, the lady being at the time, in accordance with the custom of the age, placed amongst the nuns to be educated.
The nunnery is still known by the ivy-clad walls which remain on its site.
It was a nunnery of the Benedictines, consecrated in the presence of King Stephen and his Queen in the year 1138.
The nunnery was dispossessed, and has crumbled to ruins, but the brave river passes by even as in the olden times before Henry VIII., the spoiler, gave the house to his physician, Dr. George Owen.
There was another nunnery at the foot of Witham Hill, but that was an older establishment, which existed. as early as 690, on the spot where the Earls of Abingdon have their seat, partly built, it is understood, by the stones of Godstow, even as the modern buildings at Stanton Harcourt are supposed to have been erected from the stones with which the original mansion was constructed.
The ruins of Godstow Nunnery, such as they are, catch one's eye first from the river.
It may be that the pathetic romance touching the silken thread and the bowl of poison is not, as many hold, founded upon fact; but we cannot be equally sceptical with regard to Rosamond's connection with Godstow.
She retired to the nunnery to pass the remainder of her days, after the marriage of the king, in seclusion.
She died, and was buried in the choir, opposite the high altar, and Henry raised a grand monument to her memory.
The nuns forgot the frailty of the lady, remembering rather the manner in which she had enriched the establishment, and the tokens of favour they had received from the king on her account; and we read that her remains were treated with much honour by the sisters, who hung a pall of silk over her tomb, and set it about with lighted tapers.
This chronic honour was put an end to by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who, going to the nunnery and requesting to know why one particular tomb should be so much honoured, was informed that it was the tomb of Rosamond, sometime leman to Henry II.
In orderthat the nuns might not be led astray by having her example constantly set before them, and that other women might beware, poor Rosamond's bones were cast out of the church ; but they were brought back again by the nuns, and wrapped in perfumed leather.

GODSTOW BRIDGE & THE TROUT INN WTSWG

The farther arch of the old bridge at Godstow has been removed to admit of various improvements being carried out in one branch of the stream, which here divides, and in order to widen the structure; but the two arches of the ascent from the right-hand side [left bank] remain as they were, and the well-known "Trout" Inn at Godstow retains all its characteristics of creepers, flowers, tiled roof, and pleasant waterside seats.
A full view of Oxford, set back beyond the farthest confines of Port meadow is obtained, while the smell of the roses in the pretty garden of the time-honoured "Trout" Inn still lingers about us.
The village of Wolvercott lies to the left, and at the other end of the mill-stream, the entrance to which was noticed just above the King's Weir.
Close by the ivy-covered gable of the nunnery a new weir is being erected, and it may be added that in the excavations incidental to the work four old stone coffins were discovered as recently as the summer of 1885.

PORT MEADOW WTSWG

Passing by the village of Binsey, where in 730 there was a chapel constructed with dark room for the most stubborn sort of sisters, and where the saints caused St. Margaret's Well to be opened, in order that people coming there to ease their burdened souls might be rid of their diseases, one feels that the first stage of a voyage down the Thames is pleasantly terminated by the noble array of pinnacles, towers, aud spires across Port Meadow, presented as a free common to the city by William the Conqueror, and so to this day preserved.
The towers and spires leave an imposing effect, with Shotover Hill behind.
The most prominent objects are St. Philip's and St. James's Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Observatory, the Radcliff, the Sheldonian, St. Mary's, A1l Saints', Tom Tower and the Cathedral, and, nestling down among the trees, the square grey tower of Oxford Castle.
To the right [left bank] is the "Perch" Inn at Binsey, and as you pass this Binsey Common opens out in the same direction, and there are once more the wooded slopes of the Witham Hills, which we have had in view for the last eight miles.
The River Thames round Port Meadow is more disgracefully weedy and neglected than any other portion of its course.

MEDLEY WEIR WTSWG & BRIDGE WTSWG

Beyond Binsey is Medley Manor House, at one time an oratory attached to Godstow, a place where any of the devotees, in case they were detained from the city or on their journey to Abingdon, could rest for the night, without going on to the nunnery.
The flocks of geese in hundreds, just now giving the signal of rain, on the edge of Port Meadow, opposite Binsey Common, may still lead us to think that we are in the rural parts described on previous pages; but down yonder, on the other side of the cut leading to Medley Weir, are a fleet of ugly house-boats.
There is also a semicircular iron bridge across the cut, and we are brought face to face with the fact that the next mile and a half of river will be essentially townified and crowded.
The division of the river at Medley leaves the business of practical navigation to the straight cut, and the original Thames, once flowing by the site of Bewley Abbey, will probably be soon choked out of existence.
In succession now follow in a prosy catalogue Medley Weir, the Four Streams WTSWG, the railway WTSWG, the Canal WTSWG

OSNEY

Seven Bridges Road WTSWG, and Osney Lock WTSWG and Mill.
A hoary gateway and fragment of wall, with its Perpendicular window absorbed in the mill fabric, are all that remain of Osney Abbey WTSWG, the powerful and magnificent, whose abbots were peers of Parliament.
One hastens under the railway bridge, and looks aside from the gasworks, knowing that beyond Folly bridge a new phase of Thames life will begin for the intelligent voyager.
W. Senior.

CHAPTER 2: Oxford to Abingdon by D. MacColl

Oxford, from the Upper River, Two Rivers between Medley and Folly Bridge, The Old River, Folly Bridge, Engraving: Oxford from Headington Hill, Four Streams [Rivers], The River and the University, Oxford before the University, Engraving: New College from the gardens, Oxford Churches, Magdalen, Engraving: Magdalen Tower from the Cherwell, Engraving: Stone pulpit, Magdalen, Engraving: Tom Tower, Engraving: Dome Of The Radcliffe, From Brasenose, Magdalen Bridge, Oxford University and the River, Engraving: Bump at the Barges, Oxford River Navigation, College Barges, Engraving: Varsity Barge, Oxford, Iffley Mill, Engraving: Iffley Mill, Iffley Church, Engraving: Iffley Church, Littlemore Church, Engraving: Littlemore Church & Rose Island, Kennington Railway Bridge, Rose Island, Sandford Lock, Nuneham Park, Engraving: Picnic to Nuneham, Engraving: The Bridge & Cottage, Nuneham, Carfax, Black Railway Bridge Engraving: Distant View of Abingdon

OXFORD

The traveller down stream, who looks for Oxford across the flats of Port Meadow, is aware of a large town, dusky red in colour, skirted by a canal and a railway, and dominated by the slim brick bell-tower of a church, one of the pangs of the architectural renaissance.
There, beyond the dingy quarter called Jericho, one may stray through many streets of villas in the Middle Victorian taste, by flower-beds gay with the geranium and calceolaria.
Little is wanting that would be found in St.John's Wood or West Kensington.
For this is, in late after-growth, that town of Oxford that meant to be like London, and was like London, before the University came to interfere.
It had its Norman castle, its Gild Merchant, its charter, as good as those of London.
It was a place where Parliaments met.
It had a palace of the kings, and a rich Jewry, and a great mind to trade.
But the University sprang up and choked these things.
London never had a real University, but only colleges for students of Common Law, and so flourished.
In Oxford the town went under, and the University was everything.
The "nations" came, and after long war reduced the natives to servitude.
But the wheel has turned.
The down-trodden race is quickly hiding the University with its new towns of houses and churches, and the very University has lost the monastic rule that allowed its members to camp as an alien garrison in the place.
Now they are surely being wrought into the fabric of the town.

TWO RIVERS BETWEEN MEDLEY AND FOLLY BRIDGE WTSWG

For the University there exist two rivers; one, The River, below Folly Bridge, the other, The Upper River, above Medley Weir.
Between the two there is not one stream, but many.
The river goes out of itself and returns into itself again.
And in this division it suffers various fortunes.
It goes far afield and grows forget-me-nots.
It turns mill-wheels, and is a servant of breweries.
It is locked and sluiced for the passage of barges.
It is constrained and laid away in low and discouraged quarters, where it keeps company with people out of repair, with philanthropic enterprises, with aimless smells, with exhausted dust, with retired hansom cabs.
It is beguiled into obscure cuts for bathing.
It is imprisoned under streets.
And when it comes to itself again it is not allowed to have its name, but is called by the vain sound of Isis.

The two main branches of the stream enclose a space rather over a mile in length, and roughly of the shape of a slim ewer, with a handle broken off near the top, that is at Medley Weir.
There is a minor junction of the streams by a cut across the narrowed neck of the ewer opposite Worcester Garden.
The upper of the two islands thus formed is given up to meadows and the two railway lines.
The lower island, Osney, holds the two railway stations, and the continuation southwards of the Great Western.
South of the stations, and at right angles to the railway, the Seven Bridges Road runs out towards Botley.
South of this again St.Thomas's Church lies east, and St.Mary's Cemetery and Osney Mill west of the railway havoc.
The rest is meadow and garden land, scored with the streets of old and new settlements, and cracked by lesser dykes and courses of the stream.

THE OLD RIVER WTSWG

The eastern branch, after defining the upper rim of the ewer, turns sharp southwards, and, keeping company with the canal, skirts red Oxford and Worcester Gardens.
It is here that its interest begins.
A little way above the first, or Hythe Bridge, a fresh division takes place, and a narrow irregular strip of low island is formed, running under three bridges to the Castle Mill, and below that occupied by breweries for some hundred yards.
Now it is only on the upper stretch of this island down to the Castle Mill that any attempt is made by the town to come to public and pleasant terms with its river.
The attempt is a shy one.
The treatment is on a humbler scale than that of the River Witham at Lincoln.
The Fishers Row of low houses - some new, some old, and one or two remarkable - straggles along a narrow quay, arched over by the bridges.
In the doubled stream, where it fronts the houses, fleets of old punts lie moored to their poles among the choking weeds; not the varnished toys of the Cherwell, but the craft native to these shallow standing waters, as the gondola to the lagoons of Venice.
At the back of the houses, their gardens abutting upon it in all variety of confusion and decay, moves a furtive and even feebler stream.
There is a wealth of matter here for the artist to rescue from its odours; grey walls that have seen better days and other uses, bricks rough-cast and timber, willow leaves and fluttering clothes, the most old and various dirt.
All this is only to be won by glimpses from the bridges, or from the hospitality of back pigsties and the like; and it is only just to add that the tenants of this picturesque quarter - people, pigs, and ducks - show to the curious visitor an unvarying courtesy.
The best bit was till lately to be seen from Pacey's Bridge, the second in order down stream.
Just there a house is bracketed out over the water, with windows disposed in graceful bays.
But the jealousy that keeps the stream secret has shut away that last easy view, on the one side with a shop astride the water, on the other with a mere wilful screen.
Hythe Bridge is a poor new thing; Pacey's Bridge is defaced with a new top.
The next bridge brings us to the Castle and the Castle Mill, the very heart of the old town; the Castle older than the University, the Mill of older foundation than the Castle.
Then follow breweries, not without charm, but reticent about the river.
Just below the Swan Brewery the streams come together again at a point marked by a summer-house; but it is only for a fresh separation.
From a garden in Chapel Place may be seen the point of division; but one branch is now built over.
Its name is the Trill Mill Stream, and it runs behind Paradise Square, and round by way of Rose Place, across St.Aldate's.
Then it comes to light again behind the houses, and skirts Christ Church Meadows, to join the river near Folly Bridge.
The other branch takes a stealthy course round the low quarter between Paradise Square and the gasworks.
They are least ashamed of it in Abbey Place.
From that point onward it shows at the end of poor little streets, with meadows and willows beyond.
From one of these - Blackfriars Road - a bridge crosses to the bathing-cut, which rounds the base of our ewer, and leads into the navigation stream.
At the tail of an island formed by the cut the navigation stream itself comes in, and the united water bends round the gasworks, and so to Folly Bridge, past some broken little gardens and backs of houses in Thames Street.

FOLLY BRIDGE WTSWG

Folly Bridge is as poor as the other Thames bridges in Oxford.
It replaces the old Norman Grand Pont with its forty arches, and Friar Bacon's Study WTSWG over the further end.
A top storey added to the "Study" was the "Folly."
There is another now almost in the same spot, built by a money-lender.

OXFORD, FROM HEADINGTON HILL.

FOUR STREAMS [RIVERS] WTSWG

Of the navigation stream in its course from Medley Weir there is less to say.
At the neck of the ewer, at the point called Four Streams, it goes so far as to form a regular cross.
One of the arms is the cut already mentioned running towards Worcester.
The opposite arm is known as the Old Navigation Stream, and runs out in a great loop under the Binsey Road and the Seven Bridges Road at New Botley, and back to the present navigation stream at the base of the ewer.
A smaller concentric loop leaves the stream at the first bridge beyond the station, throws off a branch to join the outer loop at the Binsey Road bridge, and returns at Osney Mill.
Here, just by the mill, there is a lock on the navigation stream.
The island formed by the mill-stream and the lock runs down a hundred yards or so, and on the face of the island, made by the loop above, there is a meaner repetition of the Fishers Row.
It may clear the maze a little to think of the two mills and islands, and quays balancing on opposite sides of the ewer.

HAGLEY STREAM [Seacourt Stream] WTSWG

But this is not all.
We have still to account for a stream that left the Thames at Hagley Pool, above Godstow.
From that point it describes a yet wider loop, passing first by Witham, then under the Seven Bridges Road at Botley, and on by the two Hinkseys.
At Clasper's Boathouse under the Long Bridges it is reinforced by a fresh offset from the main stream, and does not return again till just above Rose Island by Kennington.
The old men on the river have been heard to say that this branch from Clasper's to Kennington used to be the main stream for barges, and it is quite possible, for the Long Bridges and new towpath only date from the end of last century.
The Hinksey Stream is not navigable throughout, because of two mills on its lower reaches.
The low Cumnor Heights behind make a limit to the wandering and division of the water; but the whole flat between this boundary on the west and that of the Oxford Canal on the east is an amphibious country, now lake, now labyrinth.

THE RIVER AND THE UNIVERSITY

It will have been observed how little the obscure region of the river we have traversed has to do with the University of our time.
One is invited to think how the river of Oxford has come to be treated so; why the colleges shun it and give it over to railways and slums.
And again, if one regards the college quarter with any attention, one is forced to ask by what steps the plan of building and habit of life we know as a college came to be as it is out of the old Benedictine conventual schools.
What were the links of building between St.Frideswide's and Merton, and what has become of them?
The answer to the first question, and partly to the second, is that a more magnificent and more richly significant Oxford than the present once occupied the isle of Osney and the river quarter now so degraded;[1] but all that proper fortune of the river, all that beauty and history, has been incredibly blotted out, leaving only its first and last links in St.Frideswide's and Worcester, together with a few names and inconsiderable fragments.
The buildings of Oxford are a story whose mutilated preface is followed by a great gap where the opening chapters should be.
A line here and there marks the interval, and when the tale is taken up again it is abruptly and in a changed temper.
Quickly it runs to a fluent mannerism that makes a great bulk of the text.
Then it proceeds in a classical version till the time when our own century began to spell and imitate the archaic forms.

OXFORD BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY

The town before the University is better represented than the following period by its castle and parish churches.
The ancient St.Frideswide's remains as Christ Church.
But greater churches than St.Frideswide's, one of them, that of the Franciscans, twice as long, have been taken clean away, and not a stone remains to stand for the Dominican and Franciscan houses that moulded the early University.
We must give a little space to this, and to another missing chapter, and then briefly read the rest of the story. When the two great mendicant orders arrived early in the thirteenth century, there was already, besides the old foundation of St.Frideswide, at that time a house of Austin canons, the great monastic foundation of Osney, dating from early Norman times.
In its church, over the tomb of the foundress Edith, English wife of the second lord of the Castle, was painted a tree full of chattering pies, whose voice assailed her in her walks.
Her confessor knew them for souls in Purgatory, and the canons were installed to pray for them.
By the time the friars came to Oxford the chattering souls were perhaps as much thought of as are the souls of those killed in the French wars of the fifteenth century by the Fellows of All Souls College now.
At the Dissolution the great Abbey Church had a chance of safety.
For a short time it was the cathedral church of the new diocese of Oxford.
But that fortune passed to St.Frideswide's, and no one translated Osney Abbey into a college.
All that is left of it now is an archway and part of a barn among the buildings of the Mill. The two great orders of friars settled finally near one another on opposite sides of the Trill Mill Stream.
The Dominicans were first in the field, and for a time encamped near the schools and the Jewry, with designs on both.
They built a hospital for converted Jews, which afterwards was used as the Town Hall, and it is on record that at one time they had two Jews in the Domus Conversorum, but one of them, an acolyte, afterwards suffered a relapse.
Soon, however, the friars migrated to the damp riverside, as a place more favourable to rheumatism and ague, just as in London they went from Holborn to Blackfriars.
It was the happiest fact that the mendicant orders coming to towns in their young and ascetic days settled in outcast and uninviting quarters, and covered them, as they grew in riches, with pleasant gardens and splendid buildings.
But the Black Friars of Oxford, like those of London, are only remembered now by names of streets, and of that bend of the river by the gasworks still known as Preachers' Pool. The Grey Friars are even more completely gone.
The Paradise given them by a pious lady has given its name to a square, but the groves and buildings of the Minorites have not even left a name to the streets that have replaced them.
There must be many of the friars still below ground in their coffins; in the courtyards behind the dismal streets there are glimpses of provoking walls, but with no speaking stones; and in the wall that divides the garden of Trinity from Parks Street lie many old stones incognito, brought from the quarry of the Friars Preachers and the Friars Minor. The White Friars, or Carmelites, had no better fate.
Edward II., flying from Bannockburn with his Carmelite confessor, vowed a house to Our Lady of the White Friars if he should cross the Border in safety.
To redeem the vow he gave over his palace of Beaumont to the Carmelites.
Beaumont Street runs through the site.
Some of the stones are in Laud's new quad at St.John's.

Of another great house a small witness remains.
Above Hythe Bridge, the way by Fishers Row is continued from the tip of the eyot across a little bridge, and thence runs for a space alongside an ancient wall.
This was a boundary wall of Rewley Abbey, the great house of the order of Citeaux.
Almost covered by the wood stores of a wheelwright is a doorway with carved spandrils, and a label ending in sculptured heads.
The wheelwrights, whose sheds lean against the old wall, show a wooden peak, the last vestige of a "summer-house" lately pulled down.
Only the other day they came upon a well in the garden behind.
The London and North-Western Station occupies the site of the chief buildings.
Before it was put up the remains were considerable.
Rewley and Osney Abbeys between them accounted for most of the Osney island. But the most speaking memorial of this lost University is that side of Worcester that still remains of old Gloucester Hall.
Benedictine novices, from the many houses of the order scattered over England, were numerous among the early students of Oxford.
The Benedictines were rich, and there were few University endowments.
Gloucester Hall was the house founded in 1283 for those of the novices who came from Gloucester Abbey.
Then other Benedictine abbeys had houses built alongside the first for their own students, till twenty-five abbeys were represented.
Others in the same way sent their men to Buckingham College, Cambridge.
Over the doorways of the halls still standing at Worcester may be seen the escutcheons of their several abbeys; the griffin of Malmesbury, the cross of Norwich. The house of the fourth great mendicant order, the Austin Friars, has disappeared as completely as the other three.
On its site, in the reign of James I., Wadham College was built, but the phrase "doing Austins" long survived as a memory of the University exercises that took place in the Austin Schools. The friars of the Order of the Redemption of Captives have left as little sign.
Their property is part of the garden of New College. But some of the houses of the Regular Orders, besides Gloucester Hall, remain in a translation.
The College of the Novices from the Convent of Durham is the old part of Trinity.
St.Mary's College of the Regular Canons has left a gateway opposite New Inn Hall, and the latest-founded of the religious houses, that of St.Bernard for the Cistercians, still shows in the street with some changes as the front of St.John's.

NEW COLLEGE, FROM THE GARDENS

We have to think, then, of the Oxford of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as chiefly made up of the schools of the Regular and Mendicant Orders, afterwards suppressed.
The Colleges of the third class, the Secular Clergy, were only beginning; the prevailing influence was that of the Dominican and Franciscan teachers, particularly the latter, with their Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus and Occam, to set off against the Aquinas and Albertus of the Parisian Dominicans.
At the time of the Dissolution the numbers and spirit of the various religious houses had run very low.
However, they made a push to extend their buildings, hoping so to ensure their wealth against the Royal Commission, just as the Colleges did in our own time.
But Henry VIII.
seems, in most cases, to have made for the lead from the roofs of the buildings as his own share of the spoil, and the later additions with their flat lead roofing would just meet his taste.
The walls he sold or gave to others, who used them chiefly as quarries.
A letter quoted by Mr.
Fletcher, written to Thomas Cromwell by one of his agents, gives a good notion of the look of things at the time, and of the spirit of the reformers: -
"The Black Fryers bathe in ther backsyde lykwise dyvers Ilonds well woddyd and conteyneth in length a great ground.
There quere wasse lately new byldede and covered with ledde.
It ys lykewisse a bigge Howse, and all coveryd with slatt, saving the queere.
They have prety store of plate and juellys, and specially there ys a gudd chales of golde sett with stonys, and ys better than a C marks: and there ys also a gudd crosse with other things conteynyd in the bill.
Ther ornaments be olde and of small valor.
They have a very fayer Cundytt and ronnyth fresshelye.
Ther be butt X. Fryers, being Prests besid the Anker, which is a well-disposyd man, and have 1. marks yerly of the King's cofers."

Now we turn to the reaction against all this; to the quarter of the University that remains, the quarter of the old town parishes in which the Halls and Colleges of the secular clergy grew. And first we feel the Gothic pattern of the streets.
We have left the water behind, but the streams had to do in determining the flow of the "stream-like" streets.
They kept the forms they were pressed into by the castle and city walls; St.Giles's bursting out wide from the point where the old north gate cramped it by St.Michael's; Broad Street broad because just outside the circuit; the rest winding and twisting with the happiest effects for the jostling buildings.
> Then when we look closer at this large mass of Gothic work, of great establishments squeezed into the old shapes, and elbowing scanty strips and corners of the displaced houses, the notable point about most of the work is, not how old, but how new it is.
The Gothic is late, even belated.
Little of it is earlier than the Perpendicular Period; much of it is more recent still, and of a kind to which purists grudge even the name of Gothic.
It is true that in Oxford buildings, when made of local stone not cunningly laid, become shabby and theatrically aged in the shortest time.
They look not venerable, but battered and burned, the stone hanging in rags, and leaving where it falls raw yellow patches.
Mouldings and carvings drop away; pinnacles, battlements, and gables, and all outstanding features, thaw like blackened snow; walls are suddenly found wasted and thin, the rooms and towers depending on the merest crust of stone.
The heads about the Sheldonian Theatre shed their beards of a rainy night.
But all this is a very sham antiquity.
Some of the later buildings suffer from it most, and some of the oldest look, and are, newest because of sedulous restoration.
One has to search diligently for hints of the older work, and to entrap it as it looks out of its new body in some favourable light.

OXFORD CHURCHES

ST.MARY'S, FROM THE HIGH STREET.
It is the churches, the parish churches and the towers of St.Frideswide's and St.Mary's, that seem most to promise age in a distant prospect, and to strike a recurrent note of antiquity as one goes about the town.
The old Town Church of St.Martin at Carfax, with its picturesque altered gables and clock and "penniless bench," is much wanted; but it was pulled down inconsiderately and rebuilt in haste.
But St.Peter's, St.Michael's, St.Mary Magdalen's, and St.Giles's, are rich in beauty and interest.
The lovely spire of St.Mary's, panelled with pomegranates for Queen Eleanor, stands almost alone of the old University Church.
There is, indeed, on the north of the chancel, and set at a divergent angle, a yet older building - the two-storeyed Ancient House of Congregation.
Its two storeys simulate on the outer side the appearance of one to conform with the new church, but the groined roof remains of the lower room, now half-buried and given to lumber.
This and the old church were the real centre of the University.
In the five chapels the regents of the five faculties assembled for the Act at which disputations were held and degrees given.

Not only the Schools and Theatre and Convocation House, but the University Library, too, hived off from these buildings.
The first books were kept in chests in the "soler," or upper room, and there, too, those other chests were stored that were the earliest form of University endowment.
In them the money left by benefactors was kept, and lent out to poor students, who in return pawned books and daggers and other articles of value. The colleges began as a counterpoise to the schools of the regular and mendicant orders, more particularly the latter.
The friars, learned and powerful, naturally drew to them great numbers of the poor unattached scholars.
Statutes ineffectually made eighteen years the lowest age of consent.
The University had a hard fight to keep even its degrees in its own hands.
This third great body of scholars, unattached to monks or friars, consisted of the ordinary or secular clergy, men qualifying not merely for the work of parish priests, but for what are now the lay professions of lawyer and doctor.
They had a bad time of it while the friars were still popular.
They had few endowments, and were forced to labour for a living, or to beg their way.
It was common for poor scholars to serve as scouts.
They lived either in private lodgings or in the numerous private Halls, Inns, or Hostels that covered the sites of the present colleges.
Those are the second obliterated chapter among university buildings.
They were simply lodging-houses, rented from the owner by a Master of Arts, who was styled Principal.
By an early statute, that marks the encroachment of the University on the town, the owner of the hall was bound to let it to the first applicant who deposited the needful caution with the Vice-Chancellor.
The Principal was paid by the inmates for board and tuition.
The first colleges were such halls, furnished with an endowment for poor scholars, and with a set of statutes to regulate its administration.
At first the scholars went to service at the nearest parish church; but gradually, as funds allowed, chapel and hall and library were built, and the familiar front with its gate-tower screened the old and new buildings.
The full-grown College, as it had taken shape before the times of the Reformation and rich lay undergraduates, was a society incorporated for the benefit of poor scholars of the secular order.
Its buildings replaced the single Hall or group of Halls that had been converted from private to corporate use, or else the old tenements were recast in the new mould.
That new mould followed with modifications the plan of the monastic houses. Some of these Halls still remain.
But the form of university life they represented, and to a great extent the buildings themselves, have gone as completely as the Oxford of the Religious.
The colleges swallowed most of them.
New College accounts for ten, Merton for eight.
From old prints one can gain a notion of the splendid jumble of gables and chimneys of all degrees of dignity that enriched the streets; and one is tempted to regret that some of the colleges gave up the picturesque grouping and domestic style of the clustered halls for the more monotonous and pretentious manner of their latter shape.
As Henry suppressed the religious houses, so Laud suppressed the private halls, leaving five only as academic halls.
Of these, one - Magdalen Hall - has left its beautiful bell-tower to Magdalen College, and its second site to Hertford.
Of the rest, three are now absorbed in colleges.
The great date in college history is 1264, when Walter de Merton gave statutes to the college he had founded.
University Hall, afterwards University College, had already been founded from a legacy administered by the University.
But in Merton the idea of a great college was first clearly struck out, and its statutes were an exemplar for all succeeding societies both at Oxford and Cambridge.
Merton, however was not built in one heat.
The old quad and parts of the chapel are early work, but the tower and other parts are later.
The chapel is so large, because it is not only chapel to the college, but church to the parish of St.John, a great part of which the college absorbs.
The library is one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most ancient rooms in Oxford.

Balliol and Exeter, Oriel and Queen's, are also early colleges, but they do not stand for so much historically.
They group with Merton, and have all changed their first bodily shape.
The next great moment in the college history, the beginning of a new group, comes about a hundred years after Merton.
This was the foundation of the College of St.Mary Winton - called New from a sense of the importance of the event - by William Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester.
Several things are important about this great creation.
To begin with, the foundation was of a new magnificence.
It provided for seventy scholars, a term at that time synonymous with fellows.
There was a stronger accent about it of opposition to the regular clergy.
Its lands were bought from impoverished monastic bodies.
It was made self-sufficient by its nursery and counterpart in architecture, the College of St.Mary at Winchester.
It was saved from the jurisdiction of the University by the power granted it of giving degrees, and from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese Oxford then lay, by the appointment of the Bishop of Winchester as its Visitor.
But above all, not only was the plan of its institution a great educational achievement, but the building itself was by the same author, the work of a man of genius, coherent and complete.
The quadrangle has been altered out of all knowledge by the addition of the third storey with battlements, and the re-shaping of the windows, but even so it shares with the added wings of the garden front a wonderful dignity and purity.
The original towers are so dominant everywhere that one reads their spirit into the encumbered translation. The stroke told.
Henry VI. echoed the idea in Eton and King's College, Cambridge.
In Oxford, the chapel and cloisters of Chichele's All Souls' were imitated from New College.

MAGDALEN WTSWG

MAGDALEN TOWER, FROM THE CHERWELL

But a richer reverberation followed.
Waynflete's Magdalen is another New more magnificent, and later by a hundred years.
It is not more beautiful.
Feature by feature is reproduced, with just that luxury of virtue and grace that one would expect from Mary the Magdalen walking in the footsteps of Mary the Virgin.
The chapels are planned alike, and in either college set back to back with the hall.
Magdalen has a cloister quad, a more spacious one; a higher and richer tower, wider and more lordly grounds.
But one can turn from the baffling and haunting charm of Magdalen Tower to be satisfied with the simple fighting tower of New College; and it is dangerous to go from the blackened walls and gaunt arches, the austerely divided daylight of the cloistered walk at New College, to the coarser forms and less single purpose of the other.
The older cloister is still the walk of a recluse, overlooked only by the tower and gable of the chapel, and interrupted by rare and funeral writing on the walls.
The other is built in an easier temper.
Staircases open upon it below, and many windows occupy it above.
It is the covered thoroughfare of the College. It should be remembered, however, that Magdalen cloisters have suffered much.
They have been pulled down almost throughout and rebuilt.
An upper storey has gone from the north side, ugly Westmorland slate has replaced the grey Stonesfield kind, and windows have been made bigger and more regular.

Historically it is to be noted that Magdalen superseded a collegiate building of another kind, the old hospital or almshouse of St.John the Baptist.
The stone pulpit in St.John's Quad marks this.
On the saint's day a sermon used to be preached from the pulpit, and the quad was strewn with rushes and hung with boughs to represent a wilderness.
At last a Principal caught his death of cold by going out into the wilderness, so they gave it up, and had the sermon in chapel instead.
There was some grudging show made of keeping up the almshouse.
A low vault under a chapel was given over to the poor.
A report was drawn up for the year 1596 giving the following cheerful particulars: -
"In sommer the resort is greater, in winter very smale, bycause of the coldnes and onwholesomenes of the vault; which is in verie deed so moyst and dampish that we have the last yeare removed the beddes into another house not far of, for that everie winter they are subject to rottennes."
However, they were going to repair the floor
"as well for the safetie of our beddes as for the health and ease of the poore."
> The building of the old quad of Lincoln went on by stages during this same fifteenth century, and Corpus followed early in the next.
Neither of these has been rebuilt, but both have been defaced so as to lose almost all interest; but they stand for points in history.
Lincoln was a college of priests, to make head against Lollardry; Corpus stood for Greek. Then follows the notable foundation of Wolsey's Cardinal College, afterwards Christchurch.
All Souls' had been founded with the spoil of "alien" priories - cells, that is, of foreign monasteries in England.
Magdalen had taken the place of a religious society; but the final step was taken when English religious houses were suppressed to form one great educational foundation.
St.Frideswide's was preserved to be its chapel.
The huge ungainly quad was planned out and partly built.

After the suppression of religious houses stone was cheap, so the building went on even after Wolsey's fall.

The Tom Tower was added much later.
It is one of Wren's essays in Gothic, masterful and striking in general design, but unfeeling in detail.
The fan-vaulted roof of the hall staircase is a lovely piece of later work, but the staircase itself is badly managed.
The cathedral is a rather disconcerted building; but there is plenty in it to study and enjoy.
The story of the saint may be read in a window by Mr.Burne Jones.
Other four windows by the same artist were executed by Mr.Morris, with the result that in colour as well as in design they rank with the best of old workmanship, and can be compared with nothing new, except those from the same hands in other places. If New and Magdalen stand for the enriching sunset of Gothic in Oxford, the great group of buildings that follows the Reformation stands for a strange and prolonged after-glow of the art.
It is this period that more than any other belongs to Oxford, gives it a peculiar character.
Nowhere else is it so largely represented.
The Renaissance, coming all this way, was too weak and distressed to create forms of architecture quite its own; but it passed as a principle of change into the veins of the old style, and broke out here and there in the strangest features.

The main ideas of the Gothic structure held their own - the sloping roof, the traceried window; but a languor and a fever seized upon the mouldings and details of the old work.
At any moment the sedate lines of the Perpendicular tracery might run wild into twirls of trivial scroll-work, or one whole side of a building speak a sleepy Gothic and another stammer the queerest Greek.
But the whole seldom fails to please, because it is ordered throughout by the most sure and delicate sense of proportion.
It is the work of men whose hand is well in, whose ideas are running few and thin, but are dealt out and recombined with the utmost freedom and familiarity.
One is often blankly disappointed by the flatness, the poverty, the childishness of the decoration; but however meagre and thoughtless and alien the elements of the design may be, there never fails an artistic sense in the way they are set out, so that the most incongruous lendings of various styles meet and are subdued to perfect comfort in one another's company.
Perhaps the salt that saves the whole is the sense of humour that pervades it, just as it does the rich enjoyed sentences of the contemporary literature.
The buildings do not expect to be taken quite seriously; the figures on the tombs are very much at play with death.
Sometimes, indeed, the windows of grave buildings like the chapel of Wadham stiffen out into the older and more decorous manner; but it would be hard to match for rollicking irresponsibility the porch that Laud added to St.Mary's Church.
Colour, too, was near the heart of the builders.
They revelled in gilding, in paint, in marbles and alabaster.
And in the weighty matters of architecture that go beyond the mere building, in the recognition of its neighbourhood, of its place as a mass in the streets or a kindly growth among fields and trees, they were very much at home.
The presence of such buildings is one of comfort, of fun, of flexible tradition and generous possibilities.

The style begins at Oxford under Elizabeth, and continues under Charles; but it centres under James, and hence is conveniently called Jacobean.
Not only university and college buildings belong to it, but most of the beautiful domestic work of the streets, like Archbishop King's house off St.Aldate's, and the house off the High, used as a police-office. It was in a building of the Jacobean time that the University idea first found adequate expression, gathered out of the scattered lodgings in which it had been housed.
Already, by 1480, a noble room had been built for the Divinity school, with the library of Duke Humphrey above it.
Sir Thomas Bodley's first act was to give this library a new roof and fittings, and to add to it at right angles the building that forms above an extension of the library, below the Proscholium or ambulatory of the schools.
It was the day after his funeral, in the year 1613, that the first stone was laid of his magnificent plan for completing the quadrangle, of which the Proscholium forms one side.
This quadrangle is a plan or map of the University's theory of knowledge.
As one enters under the gateway tower the scholastic sciences announce themselves in gold letters above the various doors.
The faculties - the faculty of Arts with its subdivision into the Trivium and Quadrivium, the faculties of Canon and Civil Law and of Medicine lead up to the fifth and crowning faculty, the science of sciences, Divinity, lodged behind the richly-panelled front of the Proscholium.
Before this, the faculty of Arts had been housed in the thirty-two schools that gave their name to Schools Street.
In these the Regents, that is the young M.A.'s, the ruling and teaching body of the University, gave lectures and sat, at stated times, to determine in the disputations that preceded, as examinations do now, the B.A. degree.
The public viva voce in the schools is the remnant of this formal exhibition of logical skill.
The disputant went round to solicit the presence of his friends, and statutes were passed to restrain the system of touting for an audience as well as to limit the regular supper that followed.

At Cambridge it was the duty of the Bedells to go round to the various colleges and halls where the questionists were, and
"call or give warninge in the middest of the courte with thees words: 'Alons, alons, goe, Mrs., goe, goe,'"
and any tendency to a real viva voce was rudely checked by the same officer.
"If the Father shall uppon his Chyldren's aunswer replie and make an Argument, then the Bedel shall knocke him out"
- which seems to have meant that he hammered loudly on the door.
The Act, or public contest of degrees, still took place in St.Mary's, till the Sheldonian Theatre completed the new group of the schools in 1669.
The new Convocation House, with the Selden Library above, had already been added in 1640 at the further end of the Divinity school.
About the same time as the new schools Wadham College had been built.
Complete at the outset, it is remarkable among Oxford buildings for its singleness and symmetry of design, and its skill of building or fortune of stone; it is one of the most ancient of the colleges in the sense that it is authentic. The rebuilt University College and Oriel and the new Jesus may be grouped together.
They have in common the beautiful treatment of the upper windows as a series of little gables in place of the tiresome screen of battlements.
The front of Jesus is a modern disguise, the clever but unsympathetic work of Mr.Buckler.
It replaces the old Elizabethan front with its gateway in the fashion of the beautiful one of St.Alban's Hall.
The Jesus gate, however, had been obscured by a heavy rusticated screen.
Brasenose gained in the Jacobean Period its exquisite dormer windows; Lincoln its homely second quad and lovely chapel.
Another fine example is the hall and chapel of St.Mary Hall.
In Merton four of the five orders of the Schools Tower were reproduced.
The chief author of all this work was a Thomas Holt of York.
Among his followers were the brothers Bentley, and Acroide, Oxford builders.

A greater name is associated with the new quad of St.John's.
In this Inigo Jones was mastered by the genius of the place, and constrained to build the wonderful garden front.
Inside the quad he had his own way in the colonnades, but he was more in character still when he designed the Danvers Gateway of the new Physic Garden, and plotted its wall and walks.
Here, at last, in a quiet corner of the place, where science was beginning in a gentle way to stir, the English Gothic tradition of building was fairly broken, and the key struck of the manner that in the end of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century gave Oxford its sturdy and picturesque English Classic.
Soon after, the troubled times of the Civil War, the rather farcical, but disastrous siege of Oxford, "leaving no face of a University," and the subsequent spoiling of the colleges by the Puritans, must have served very effectually to snap the chain of building tradition, and make a blank for the new ideas.
When the strange holiday time was over, and the University was in a frame for building again, the period of Wren and of his school began.
The Chapel of Brasenose, built under the Commonwealth, marks the point when the relations of the mixed styles were becoming too strained.
The Sheldonian Theatre announces the rupture.
It is in Wren's happiest manner.
There is no building where the audience is more artfully disposed so as itself to be a great part of the architecture.
This was followed by various buildings of the school of Wren.
He revised Bathurst's design for Trinity Chapel, though he clearly thought it a bad job, and he is said to have had a hand in Hawksmoor's work at Queen's and All Souls.
Certainly the robust screen and gateway of the Queen's front are not unworthy of him.
Aldrich's All Saints' Church and Peckwater Quad at Christ Church belong to the early eighteenth century.

THE DOME OF THE RADCLIFFE, FROM BRASENOSE

The last great building in this manner is Gibbs's Radcliffe Library.
It gives the University a comfortable centre as only a dome can, and counts for quite half in any distant view of Oxford buildings. The rest of the eighteenth century has nothing very notable to show.
Hawksmoor, in his nightmare buildings at All Souls', had proved how dead Gothic was.
A good deal of Classic went up, the work of academic amateurs, dabbling in Vitruvius and Palladio.
But one holds one's breath till the period is well over.
Dilettanti among the dons travelled to Italy and came back terribly ashamed of their barbarous Oxford.
It is a matter for thankful wonder that all the old buildings were not replaced by Palladian colleges.
The clean sweep of old Queen's and of the mass of buildings that made way for the Radcliffe, must have tempted many a common room.
Hawksmoor actually prepared a design for a brand-new Classic Brasenose, with four domes and a High Street front.
Magdalen had the narrowest escape.
A Mr.Holdsworth, a Fellow of the College, "an amiable man and a good scholar," returned from a sojourn in Rome full of enlightenment.
His first scheme was to pull down the whole building, tower and all; but he had to give up the tower chapel and hall, and content himself with the destruction of the cloister quad.
However, he began his scheme with the New Buildings on unoccupied ground, and somehow it was not carried further; so the great new quad, with its three colonnades, remained on paper.

MAGDALEN BRIDGE WTSWG

But in 1771 the University set itself to a wider change.
The rough unpaved streets in which the buildings were rooted like trees, the island markets that blocked the traffic, the narrow rambling bridges, and above all, the North Gate or Bocardo by St.Michael's, and the East Gate above Magdalen, hurt the best feelings of dons dreaming of vistas and piazzas.
The place, besides, was no doubt very dark and dirty.
An Act of Parliament was obtained for cleaning, lighting, and paving the town, removing gates and other obstructions, building markets, and repairing or rebuilding Magdalen Bridge.
So Oxford became convenient and lost half its pictorial effect.
The old bridge over the Cherwell at Magdalen was everything that a good bridge can be without being convenient.
It had a chequered course of six hundred feet over land and water, leaping the water in a series of arches of different height and width just as was necessary; occupied by houses and shops where it crossed the land; and throwing out, at irregular intervals, angular bays of varying width and projection.
But in some places it was as narrow as thirteen feet, some of the arches were ruinous, and the city and county were responsible for the repair of different parts, which they both appear to have left alone.
So it had to come down.
The new bridge, as well as the market and other changes, was the work of an engineer named Gwyn.
His bridge kept something of the old picturesqueness, though in a formal way.
It had the same places to go over; a circular bay in the centre stood for the old angles; and the lines at either end swept out in graceful curves.
But people were very angry because it was so narrow and high.
The roadway was afterwards heightened to reduce the pitch of the bridge, the parapet was lowered, and in our own time the width has been doubled for the convenience of trams.

Old St.Clement's Church, too, has gone from the road on the further side, and has been rebuilt in another place and manner in full view of every one who crosses the bridge. Many of the old houses had been shorn away in the process of widening the streets; but some people were not satisfied.
The old Gothic buildings had begun to command a certain zeal without knowledge; but people disliked the Gothic pattern of the streets, and the irregular patches of domestic buildings.
They wanted to have things cleaned up, and made regular; to have "views;" to see the great buildings in solitary distance with no interference from house-roofs or trees, a thing that very few buildings in the world can stand.
An interesting evidence of this state of mind is a little book by a certain rector of Lincoln, Dr.Tatham.
It was he who defaced the old quad of his college with stupid battlements and other changes.
He is remembered by Mr.Cox as an old gentleman, who lived out of Oxford, but might be seen landing his pigs in the market-place on Saturdays, and who, in defence of the faith and the Three Witnesses, in the University pulpit, wished all the "Jarmans" at the bottom of the "Jarman" Ocean.
The book is called "Oxonia Explicata et Ornata: Proposals for Disengaging and Beautifying the University and City of Oxford."
The buildings of Oxford, he thought, were
"too crowded and engaged.
Our forefathers seem to have consulted petty convenience and monastic reclusiveness, while they neglected that uniformity of Design which is indispensable to elegance, and that grandeur of Approach which adds half the delight.
If the Colleges and Public Edifices of this place were drawn apart from each other, and dispersed through the extent of a thousand acres, so that each might enjoy the situation a man of genius would approve, we might boast," &c.
He prefixes to the book a little design of his own for a martyr's memorial,
"a triumphant monument to be placed across Broad Street, the whole so airy as very little to obstruct the view of the buildings."
Of this design one may say that it would have been much more interesting than the Eleanor Cross of Sir Gilbert Scott.
This cross of Scott's was one of the first new works at Oxford of the Gothic revival.
Wyatt and others had already worked at what they called restoration, and Pugin's gateway, lately removed, had been set up at Magdalen the year before.

Oxford has suffered its full share of buildings that were the costly grammatical exercises of men learning a dead tongue.
In architecture such exercises are more expensive and obtrusive than in any other art, and it will be long perhaps before people will have the courage and sacrifice to pull them down again.
Some are merely learned and lifeless, like Buckler's Magdalen School and Jesus, and Scott's Chapel of Exeter.
Others are hopeless, sullen blocks, like Scott's extensions of Exeter and New College, and Butterfield's new buildings at Merton.
Others are fancifully bad, like the conscientious ugliness of the Museum, and the recherché ugliness of Balliol, and the mixture of both in the Meadow Buildings of Christ Church.
Butterfield in Balliol Chapel and Keble College shows a great power of geometrical invention in form and colour, an invention for the most part greatly astray.
It is refreshing among all this to come upon the strong, though wayward artistic temperament of Burges in the decoration of the hall and chapel of Worcester, or even the respectable classic Taylorian buildings of Cockerell, unpleasant in colour and jarring on the spirit of the place as they are.
Very different work has been done of late years.
There is less about it of defiant expression of undesirable artistic personality, or pedantic exhibition of a style - more recognition of the power of the place, more actual artistic instinct.
Even the much abused Indian Institute of Champneys, in spite of the heavy frivolity of its details and interior, is, in the disposition of the wall and window space, the invention of its tower, and the way the whole building takes its place in the picture, a piece of architecture, which such things as Balliol are not.
The space of blank wall on its corner tower is worth more than all the geometrical troubles that fret the face of Keble.
At Magdalen, again, the genius of the old buildings has been lovingly reproduced by Mr.Bodley in the new.
His tower is not good, and it was carrying faithfulness too far to reproduce the stupid gargoyles and grotesques of the original; but much of the rich decoration in wood and stone is refined in design and workmanship.
One can praise, too, the extension of St.John's.
It may be said of all the new Oxford buildings that they are apt to be heavy within, owing a good deal to the fear of fire that makes all the staircases of stone. But there is an architect who has taken up the tale where Thomas Holt dropped it, and who has carried it farther, with results almost as important for the appearance of Oxford.
A like moment in the history of the place seemed to have come round again.
The new ways of the University needed new schools - for examination this time instead of disputation - and a great extension of college building coincided.
Never, perhaps, since Wren had the churches of London to rebuild has one architect had such a fling in so important a place as Mr.T.G.Jackson in the Oxford of our time.
And there can be no question that, whatever the faults of restlessness and overcrowding that sometimes mar his designs, Mr.Jackson has been worthy of his opportunity.

The last great addition to Oxford is its undergraduates.
It is not very long since the colleges, in respect of undergraduates, were normally as All Souls' is now, with its four Bible Clerks; but they were not as All Souls' is in respect of its Fellows.
The long deserts of theological and political war had left them for the most part mere club-houses, whose members existed to drink port together of an evening, and abuse one another in little pamphlets during the day.
The Common Room was the great invention of the late seventeenth century, and the eighteenth was spent in bringing it to perfection.
Then came the Fellows of Oriel, the Examination Statutes, the genius of the Masters of Balliol, the Commission, the new Statutes, the Unattached.
It is an exciting show for the visitor, this incongruous surface of new and old, this great bustle and pulse of the machine among the frail and crumbling walls.
Each morning dilatory tides of men in cap and gown set about the streets under the jangling bells; each afternoon, in punctual haste, a steady stream of the same men, in flannel, makes for the river, and flows back for the monastic evensong and refectory dinner.
There was a time when the dinner-hour was ten o'clock in the morning, and it was thought that so late an hour was a sign of the decay of learning.
Meanwhile the streets grow emptier, and the visitor, in the abstraction of the growing darkness, will gather hints of the antiquity about him.
He will see the society grimace of the buildings relax.
Their features will relapse into startling meanings, and the presence of other centuries will strike in upon his senses.
If he is an American, like Mr.James's Passionate Pilgrim, he will feel about it all the pang of a forfeited possession.
It is part of himself that was lost and is found, a history forgotten long before he was born.
Now he remembers it.

Nowhere is midnight so late as in Oxford.
It is announced from so many towers at so many moments by bells of the most various tone and cadence; but by all, even to the most maundering and belated, with the same precise conviction, as if one could hear all the lecturers saying the same thing in their own words -
It is midnight here, now.
And faint and loud another and another awakes and insists,
It is midnight here, now.
Through the middle clamour the chime of St.Mary's drops down three pathetic steps and climbs up through the same intervals.
The University is older by another hour.

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE RIVER WTSWG

The great deed of the new undergraduates was the discovery of the river.
In the early years of the century it was still only a place for fishing in; occasionally a heavy tub was rowed down to Nuneham.
Bell-ringing had gone out as an exercise; cricket was the game of one exclusive club; the nearest approach to a healthy rivalry between the colleges was a competition between New College and All Souls' in making negus.
New College won by putting in no water.
It was not till 1837 that the old boats had their sides cut down.
About ten years later outriggers came in, and after another ten, keelless boats.
Another ten brought sliding seats from America, and so the skiff and the four and the eight reached their perfect economy of construction, and the quality of beauty they share with their counterpart, the bicycle, on land.
Both bicycle and skiff are extensions of the human machine within such limits that they remain as it were mere developed limbs working at every moment as parts of one balancing frame, projections of the person.
In 1839 the University Boat Club was started, and the great Oxford school of rowing shot up to overshadow the older faculties.

OXFORD BUMPS WTSWG

A "BUMP" AT THE BARGES

Before this time college racing had begun on the admirable bumping system, that not only makes the race a prolonged spectacle for those who stand still to see, but allows of so much spirit of body in those who run by their college boat.
At first the boats started out of Iffley Lock.
The stroke of each boat, as its turn came, ran down the thwarts pushing out, and the next boat followed as soon as he cleared the lock.

OXFORD RIVER NAVIGATION

The river between Oxford and Abingdon in its present shape is a sort of free canal, locked at Iffley and Sandford, and again just above Abingdon.
There used to be a lock at Nuneham WTSWG , but it was taken down.
More recently, too, the Folly Bridge Lock was carried away, and has not been replaced.
[ 1884: Lock gates removed and passage left open WTSWG ]
The history of the river as a work of art is a long and interesting one.
Obstructions to its natural course, and to its navigation, began with mills and mill-weirs.
In early charters there are provisions for removing
"gorees, mills, wears, stanks, stakes, and kiddles."
Commissions and Acts of Parliament tinkered at the navigation, but till the end of the eighteenth century no progress was made beyond the old mill-weir, with sluices in it to let the boats through.
This arrangement was called a "flash" lock.
The flashing emptied the reach of the river above the lock, but all the water was needed to move the heavy barge sticking on the "gulls" below.
Navigation was of course terribly slow.
A bargeman had sometimes to send on ten miles ahead to get a flash when going up stream, and sometimes lay for a month till enough water had accumulated.
When he got it there was none for any one else.
Leonardo da Vinci, who thought of everything, had invented the pound-lock long ago; and other people before and after him had hit on what seems a very obvious contrivance.
But that ingenious people, the Chinese, are said still to hoist their barges over weirs, and it was not till the time of the great period of canal-making that began with the Bridgewater Canal in 1760 that the pound-lock made any way in this country.
The canal from Birmingham reached Oxford in 1790, and shortly afterwards the locks and towpath were put into their present shape.
Then followed jealousies between rivers and canals, till the railways came and made inland navigation of less importance.
Nowadays there is little barge traffic through Oxford (Folly Bridge was always a difficult point), but another question, that of floods, presses as much as ever.
Quite recently the engineer to the Thames Commission brought out a scheme for doing away with Iffley Lock and Weir, and dredging a deep and narrow channel between Iffley and Folly Bridge.
The Vice-Chancellor and the Dean of Christchurch, both by virtue of office Commissioners, were in favour of this scheme with a view to Oxford health; but it has been proved to the satisfaction of the Thames Conservancy Board, whose officers have examined the place, that so sweeping a change is not needed.
The effect of the change would be to give the river banks instead of brims, and it has been argued that it would kill the elms of Christ Church and the fritillaries in the water meadows about Iffley.
Most serious of all would be the loss of Iffley Mill WTSWG .
[ Iffley Mill burnt down in 1908 ]
We may hope that Oxford health need not be bought so dearly.
Meantime Iffley Lock WTSWG ends the shorter course for rowing practice, Sandford WTSWG the longer; while Nuneham WTSWG and Abingdon WTSWG, to keep to an Oxford point of view, mark the longer picnic courses.

COLLEGE BARGES WTSWG

THE 'VARSITY BARGE

It is all Frideswide ground; the saint was rowed to the outhouse near Abingdon by an angel, when she was warned in a dream and fled.
The meadows of her convent now are lined by the college barges.
These are an interesting study in development.
The first of them were old procession barges of the London City Companies.
One of them, the Oriel barge, still remains, with its delicate form, and long sharp prow, in which the rowers sat.
The bronze figures by the door of the saloon are untouched, the oval windows, the tarnished gilding within.
But the spirit of utility rebelled and the model changed.
The long prow was chopped off close, the semblance of the high stern went, and there was left merely a square floating dressing-room with railings round its roof, and seats for the spectators of races.
Then the sense of beauty mutinied, perhaps alleging the use of the toy for picnic excursions, and the prow and stern were restored.
The University barge is a monument of the Gothic revival.
Several architects have tried their hand in designs for these craft, and new ones are from time to time constructed.
It is the oddest little street, this row of motley Noah's Arks; and when the high poles shake out their amazing flags, and the men come down in fearless college colours, and a vast and diverse millinery decks every foot of standing room the roofs can give, there would seem to be some touch of an Arabian Night about a very English day, were it not that the vigorous people wear many more colours than Arabia would allow.

IFFLEY MILL WTSWG

[ Iffley Mill was burnt down in 1908 ]

IFFLEY MILL

IFFLEY CHURCH

IFFLEY CHURCH

A little hill at Iffley lifts up the rusty-grey rectory and church.
The church is, for its size, made in an absurd number of styles, beginning with Late Norman.
The heavy arches inside are carved round with sunflowers, looking like an ancient imitation of modern work.
Outside, there is the strangest confusion of carvings; a centaur strayed from Phigaleia, and other pagan images among the Christian symbols.
The Gods in Exile have visited Iffley too.
On the south side a great yew has been building all through the Transition and the Perpendicular and the Tractarian times, and the people who Decorated, and the people who Late Middle Pointed, and the rest make the ground quite uneven round its roots.
An undated villager, who styles himself Archdeacon of Iffley, and has a venerable humour, comes among the graves for company.

LITTLEMORE CHURCH and ROSE ISLAND WTSWG

LITTLEMORE CHURCH and KENNINGTON ISLAND [ROSE ISLAND]

Behind the hill, and a little beyond Iffley, lies Littlemore.
Here is the little church that Newman built, and came to from St.Mary's for the last two years of the Via Media.
Near it is the range of low buildings that people called a monastery, where Mark Pattison and others came to be with Newman, and where, on October 8th, 1845, Newman was received into the "One Fold of Christ" by Father Dominic the Passionist, the good father making holy puns upon the name of the place.
Now The College, as the building is called in the village, is given as almshouses to the poor.
The largest room is a public library.
In the kitchen lives an old woman who served the Newmans in her youth.
Her husband, an old toy peasant, with smock-frock and silver hair, and a fine rheumatism that I am sure his country gladly supports, sits by.
She stands up and remembers Newman.
He lived there with his pupils "before he became a Pope.
The Pope of Rome, that's the real Pope, over-persuaded him, and he went away and never came back again.
She did hear that the Church of England gave him some punishment for leaving, but didn't rightly know.
And the clerk's wife had been to see him, and found him in a bare room with no carpet on the bricks, like any poor person, and had said that it was to be humble and like his Master that he did it all."

KENNINGTON RAILWAY BRIDGE WTSWG

[ The railway arrived there in 1844 and crossed the river in 1864. ]

Meanwhile on the river we have to pass some ornate sewage works, and the wanton embankment of a railway, that here crosses to Littlemore.

ROSE ISLAND WTSWG

Below lies the Rose Isle, with its "Swan Inn," and on the right the heights come nearer with the little village of Kennington.
A beautiful tree-planted road runs along the top to Radley, with its school in the old park of the Bowyers' house, and against the tall trees is a little grey church and thatched cottages, where women come out and sit with their sewing machines on the summer evenings.
From this the road goes on through a corn country to Abingdon.

SANDFORD [LOCK] WTSWG

Next on the river comes Sandford Mill, with a leaning chimney, that has all the interest and all the beauty of the leaning tower of Pisa.
Sandford Church lies away from the river, nearer the Nuneham Road.
The porch proclaims,
"Condidit me domina Eliz. Isham. Anno gratiæ 1652," and adds -
"Thanks to thy charitie, religiose dame,
Which found me old, and made me new againe."
It is proper, at the same time, to speak strongly of the taste which found the church Norman, and made it something very new indeed.
But it is worth while going in to see the curious carving in the chancel of the Assumption of the Virgin.

NUNEHAM PARK WTSWG

A PICNIC TO NUNEHAM

Another mile, and the heights of Nuneham close in on the left with woods sweeping down to the very edge of the water.
Presently one comes upon a little island, connected with the Nuneham side by an intensely rustic bridge.

THE BRIDGE AND COTTAGE, NUNEHAM

By the landing-place is a cottage with exaggerated thatch.
Here they make tea.
They make most not for the University picnics that the summer term brings to these hospitable woods, but when the great revolt of the town sets in with the long vacation.
The river is as populous as ever then with dashing young fellows in flannel, and enchanting young ladies dressed in the depth of fashion.
Great and many barges are towed down to Nuneham, and there merry people dance round Carfax, and float up again to Salter's in the heavy purple dusk, trolling snatches of songs.

CARFAX

Carfax reminds us what a place of shifting Nuneham is.
To begin with, the family was removed hither from Stanton Harcourt in the last century; then they moved the church and the village to new places; then the river was moved into a new cut, and the town of Oxford presented Lord Harcourt with Otho Nicholson's conduit.
It was a work that gave the town the final accent of the Jacobean style; but it was in the way of cabs.
May one hope that perhaps it came to Nuneham, like other pilgrims from Oxford, only for a season, and that it is waiting in that hospitable retreat till its home is worthy of it again? The conduit did good service to Nuneham at the time.
It took the place of a projected "Gothic castle." Gothic castles and abbeys, well ruined, were in vogue, to cap a rising ground or to conceal a dairy.
It was the time of "landscape gardening." People corrected their land as much as possible after the ideas of Claude.
It is for his pictures one must look in grounds like those of Nuneham.
The trim Elizabethan garden, with its pleasaunce and mount, and bowling-green and wilderness, its fountains and clipped trees, give place to a carefully-arranged disorder.
Foregrounds were picturesquely grouped, middle distances were plotted, and sunk fences, palings painted green, grottoes with stalactites and stalagmites and other devices went to make up what was called Nature.
The disciple of Rousseau felt that he had indeed returned when he could sit upon a jag of extremely difficult geology fresh from the contractor's hand, and drop the tear of sensibility into the cascade that his own fingers had turned on.
The man who had the chief hand in the laying out of Nuneham was Lancelot Brown, called "Capability;" but Lord Harcourt kept, besides, two tame poets, Mason, the author of "The English Garden," and Whitehead, the Laureate, to help him to be elaborately natural in his gardening, and to write verses on the seats.
The two had a genuine contempt for one another.
Mason had the last word.
He wrote the verses on Whitehead's memorial urn. He said -

.... let the sons of fire
The genius of that modest bard despise,
Who bade discretion regulate his lyre,
Studious to please, but scorning to surprise;
Enough for him, if those who shared his love
Through life, who virtue more than verse revere,
Here pensive pause, while circling round the grove,
And drop the heart-paid tribute of a tear.

Mason could do most things badly. His patron says of him: -
"In the church there is a barrel-organ, upon which is set Mr.Mason's music for the responses to the Commandments, and his Sunday hymns.
The adjoining flower-garden was formed by him, and he suggested the alterations on the north terrace.
So that in a very small space we have specimens of his genius in music, painting"
(the altarpiece of the church was his work),
"and poetry; of his taste in improving the beauties of Nature; and what is most soothing to those who loved him, a proof that he applied his talents to the noblest purpose, that of celebrating the praises of Him from whom he received them."
All this has only a little to do with the look of Nuneham Reach from the river.
One may discern upon it perhaps the seal of Claude, of this and the other poet.
It is so with all planted landscape.
But apart from that, Nuneham, in its architecture of hill and wood and water, has the trick of the great places in Thames scenery.
It is an early feat that promises Richmond.

NUNEHAM [BLACK] RAILWAY BRIDGE WTSWG

[ 1844 a timber bridge (Brunel)
1856: an iron bridge - which is the bridge referred to
1929: the current steel bridge ]

It is best to see Nuneham Reach from the railway bridge.
From any other point it is necessary to see the bridge itself.

DISTANT VIEW OF ABINGDON

Soon after its great achievement the river is claimed again by a distant spire.
Above Nuneham the towers of Oxford linger, holding the landscape; for the rest of the way it belongs to St.Helen's at Abingdon.

[ Throughout the Thames it is distinctly noticeable that there are many more trees now than in the past.
I can't find this view of Abingdon - nor can Oxford now be seen from Nuneham. ]

D. S. MACCOLL.

CHAPTER 3: Abingdon to Streatley By J. Penderel-Brodhurst

Map: Abingdon to Streatley, Abingdon, Abingdon Bridge, Engraving: Abingdon Bridge, Engraving: Abingdon from the river, St Nicholas' Church, Abingdon, St Helen's Church, Abingdon, Christ's Hospital, Abingdon, Below Abingdon, Culham Bridge, Culham, Engraving: Culham Church, Culham Lock, Appleford Bridge and Clifton Lock, Clifton Hampden, Clifton Hampden Church, Engraving: Clifton Hampden Church, Barley Mow, Engraving: Dorchester from Little Wittenham, Day's Lock, Dorchester, Dorchester Abbey, Sinodun Hill, Engraving: Sinodun Hill & Day's Lock, Shillingford, Shillingford Bridge, Engraving: Shillingford Bridge, Shillingford To Benson, Benson Church, Benson Lock, Wallingford, Engraving: St Peter's & Wallingford Bridge, Former Wallingford Lock, Mongewell, Moulsford Railway Bridge, Moulsford & The Beetle And Wedge, Engraving: Moulsford Ferry, Cleeve Lock, Goring Lock, Goring And Streatley, Streatley Mill, Engraving: Streatley Mill, Streatley Church.

ABINGDON TO STREATLEY.

ABINGDON

Unless they be absolutely black and squalid, all old country towns have a charm of their own. They may possess historical or personal associations of the supremest interest, like Lichfield; they may hold a central place in some dire story of battle and siege, like Colchester; their renown may be architectural, as at Salisbury; or that of a vice-metropolis, as at York. Others there are, and they are in the majority, which have for all attraction quaint streets of gabled houses, and rural environs gay with birds and flowers, and ancient timbered parks watered by quivering streams.
The town of Abingdon unites most of these attributes, save that it has seen little of war, and that it is unassociated with any commanding personality.
It is handsomer and more shapely than most of the riverside towns in the Thames Valley; and although it is little more than a big village in the centre of a moderately prosperous agricultural district, it is entitled to take upon itself some of the airs and graces due to the possession of distinctions for which many larger places sigh in vain, since it has been a municipal and parliamentary borough since the days of Mary Tudor.

ABINGDON BRIDGE

ABINGDON BRIDGE

A town seated upon a river is nearly always seen to best advantage from the water, and the view of Abingdon immediately after the bridge is shot is very pretty and reposeful.
The bridge itself, although not remarkably graceful, is yet exceedingly picturesque.
Of great antiquity, it is greyish-brown of hue, and profusely mossed from water-line to coping.
Several of the arches are dry, and serve only to carry on the road above, with its irregular rows of oddly-gabled cottages.
[On the right bank] all is level meadow, backed by belts of woodland; [on the left bank] lies the town, the tall, handsome spire of St. Helen's Church, with its flying buttresses, rising high above the red-tiled roofs of the waterside buildings.
Abingdon is a land of chestnut-trees.
Along the waterside, on the eyots, in the quiet gardens of the old red-brick houses, there are chestnuts.
To the stranger chestnuts and grey-stone villas are, indeed, the two most notable characteristics of this pretty little town.
In the late spring and early summer the place seems to be surrounded with the peculiarly lovely blossom of a tree which, whatever the season may be, is always pleasing to look upon.
The chestnut in England has in modern times been treated with less courtesy than it deserves.
It is a better tree in many ways than the elm, which is usually placed only a step or two below the oak.
It may not be so graceful, but it is beautiful notwithstanding, and far less treacherous.
In such esteem, indeed, was it held by our ancestors that many of their beautiful half-timbered houses, which a careless posterity supposes to have been invariably built of oak, were largely constructed of chestnut, while many an old house is full of admirably carved and polished chestnut furniture.

ABINGDON, FROM THE RIVER

All that there is of interest in Abingdon centres round the bridge - the two ancient churches, the ruins of the abbey, and the market-cross.
So many rich and flourishing towns grew up, in the far monastic days, around the great abbeys that it is a not unfair presumption that before the Dissolution Abingdon enjoyed comparatively greater importance and prosperity than it does now.
It is still a flourishing place, and although its streets are quiet they present no signs of decay.
It is true that it did not become a borough until after the Dissolution; but since the charter was granted by Queen Mary, it may have been intended as some solatium [consolation] for what the townspeople had lost.
That they really did lose much is clear.
Abingdon was a mitred abbey, and very ancient, having, all legend says, been founded in the seventh century.
At the Conquest the abbot held great landed possessions in his trust, and the house was no doubt rich in the portable wealth for which the monasteries were renowned - vessels of gold and silver, censers encrusted with gems, jewelled crosses, and vestments embroidered with cloth of gold.
As the abbey grew in riches and independence the monks seem to have taken very little trouble to keep on good terms with the townspeople or with the country-side.
Quarrels were constantly brewing, provoked, no doubt, by each side alternately; but the town was stronger than the abbot and his chapter and all the brethren, and about the time of Edward III.'s accession the men of Abingdon and Oxford united to read the monks a lesson they were not likely to forget.
A great riot occurred, in which the Mayor of Oxford and the more muscular students of the University lent their aid, with the result that a large portion of the abbey buildings was burned.
The town was gradually becoming independent of the large revenues disbursed by the abbot, for it conducted a very remunerative commerce in cloth, and, indeed, an old chronicler tells us, "stood by clothing".
Nevertheless, when, in 1538, the abbey went the way of all the other monasteries, Abingdon necessarily received a heavy blow.

The remains of the monastic buildings, although not extensive, are picturesque and exceedingly interesting.
The abbey precincts probably sloped to the water's edge, since the gateway, which is still in fair preservation, is close to the river, near the market-place.
It has been shorn of much of its ornamentation, and now possesses no very remarkable features, either of architecture or of decoration; but it has been carefully conserved, and remains whole and sound.
The most attractive portion of the abbey buildings still existing is used as a brewery, and this, like the gateway, has been religiously shielded from other injury than Time inflicts.
This portion consists of the abbot's apartments and the crypt beneath.
The abbatial parlours have been converted into lofts, while the crypt has returned to what may not improbably have been its original uses - the storage of great casks of the ale for which Abingdon is well famed in its own neighbourhood.
The crypt is entered beside a backwater, where grow more of the abounding chestnuts; but to reach the lofts, where once the abbots of Abingdon transacted such secular affairs as the regulation of accounts and the inditing of business letters, one has to ascend a short flight of time-worn steps.
The doorways have pointed arches, and the windows likewise, in the main, preserve their ancient appearance.
In one of the lofts are the remains of a handsome fireplace, which has been assigned to so remote a period as the reign of Henry III.
The gigantic chimney served by this fireplace presents a remarkable and picturesque appearance as seen from the road.
To those of an antiquarian turn of mind these monastic remains are very interesting; and they deserve to be better known.

St NICHOLAS' CHURCH, ABINGDON

At the corner of the Market-place, adjoining the Abbey Gateway, is the church of St. Nicholas, which, although far less interesting than St. Helen's, nearer the river, yet contains much that is worth seeing and describing.
Architecturally it is not remarkable, save for a Norman doorway and an unusual little turret which surmounts the tower, and forms the roof of a minstrels' gallery of great antiquity.
Here is the tomb of John Blacknall and his wife, who left many bequests to the town, one of which is still enjoyed by forty-seven poor persons, who receive each a loaf of bread at their benefactors' tomb every Sunday.
The monument to this united pair is of great height, and records that, by a rare coincidence, they both died on the same day - the 21st of August, 1625.
The epitaph insists upon this touching unity even in death in the undignified language common to inscriptions of the kind: -

Here death's stroke even did not part this pair;
But by this stroke they more united were.
And what they left behind you plainly see -
One only daughter and their charity.
What though the first by death's command did leave us,
The second, we are sure, will ne'er deceive us.

Among the ancient treasures of the church are a carved font, an ancient lantern in the porch, and the remains of a painted window, with an illegible inscription.
Opposite this church, at the side of the Market-place, is the Market Cross, designed by Inigo Jones, erected in 1667, and far too extensively restored in 1853.
It is really, like so many similar buildings, a covered market, with space for a considerable number of persons to congregate.
The fine timber roof, which has happily not been interfered with, is supported upon stone pillars.
This building occupies the site of one of our most famous stone crosses, which the town owed - as it, no doubt, owed much else - to one of the religious foundations.
One of the fraternities connected with the Church of St. Helen was called the Brethren of the Holy Rood, and of this godly community no less a personage than Thomas Chaucer, son of the father of English poetry, was a governor.
The Brethren of the Holy Rood erected this cross at their own expense, and it has always been believed that Thomas Chaucer had some hand in designing it.
Leland, the antiquary, did not overstate the matter when he described it as a
"right goodly cross of stone, with fair degrees and imagerie".
It had a decorated base, and two tiers of canopies containing statuettes, while upon the top was a carved tabernacle.
The treaty with the Scots in 1641 was celebrated by the singing of the 106th Psalm at the foot of the cross by a gathering of two thousand people.
Three years later it was demolished by Waller's army, as being a "superstitious edifice".
So much admired were the graceful proportions of Abingdon Cross that it was taken as the model for that which Sir William Hollis erected at Coventry.
If Chaucer's son really had any part in designing it, we do not know; but it is at least pleasing to fancy that he had.
The existing market cross is a not unpleasing piece of work; but many a masterpiece of Inigo might be spared could we but have restored to us the graceful sculptured rood built by the Confraternity of the Holy Cross.

ST HELEN'S CHURCH, ABINGDON

The Church of St. Helen, with its precincts, is by far the most interesting part of Old Abingdon.
St. Helen's is an exceedingly handsome, well-proportioned church, such as one rarely finds in so small a town.
There has been some internal restoration, and the tower, from which springs the slender arrow-like spire, was renovated at a very large expense in 1885; but, at least in the interior, little violence appears to have been done, judging from the undisturbed condition of the tombs and mural monuments.
The church is of unusual size, and its generous proportions speak well for the pious large-heartedness of the founders.
The timbered roofs are admirable, carved boldly and simply, and still quite sound.
In the chancel the roof is more elaborately carved, and the timbers of the north aisle retain faint blurred traces of once brilliant religious paintings.
The church possesses the unusual number of five aisles, named respectively the Jesus aisle, Our Lady's aisle, St. Helen's aisle, St. Catherine's aisle (in which most of the Abingdon worthies are buried), and the aisle of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross.
There are said to be only two or three other five-aisled churches in the kingdom.
There are two or three good old tombs to bygone Abingdon worthies, and upon one of them the inveterate punning propensities of our ancestors, where inscriptions of any kind were concerned, is oddly exemplified.
This is the tomb of "Richard Curtaine, gent., a principall member of this Corpâ" whose epitaph reads: -

Our Curtaine in this lower press
Rests folded up in natur's dress.

The real Abingdon shrine, however, is the resting-place, against the chancel, of John Roysse, who founded the Grammar School.
This "pious ancestor" died in 1571, yet there is usually a wreath of flowers lying upon his breast.
It is an altar-tomb, with a reclining full-length effigy and a partially-defaced inscription.
Good Master Roysse was one of the many charitable benefactors who seem to have flourished in the genial soil of Abingdon.
The Grammar School was founded in his lifetime; but in his will he left at least two other charities.
He was clearly not the stamp of man who has a mind to be forgotten after death.
The upper stone of his tomb, he ordained, was to be the "great stone" in the summer arbour of his garden in London, and the twelve old widows who were to receive each a loaf, "good, sweet, and seasonable", kneeling round his stone every Sunday, were to say, upon receiving their doles, "The blessed Trinity upon John Roysse's soul have mercy."
This once picturesque ceremony, shorn of its olden formalities, has, since 1872, been performed in the hall of Christ's Hospital.
To play upon numbers and words was one of the conceits of the time, and so it was ordered that, since the Grammar School was established at once in the 63rd year of its founder's age, and in the 63rd year of the century, the foundation should educate 63 boys "in sæcula sæculorum". [ie for ever]
A small room shut away from the church, and called the Exchequer Chamber, is used as the muniment room of the famous "Hospital of Christ", concerning which much hereafter.
Yet another interesting tomb - interesting because it exhibits the monumental sculpture of a century ago in all the fulness of its bathos.
Mrs. Elizabeth Hawkins, whom it commemorates, died in 1780, and ordered that a sum of £400 should be expended upon a fitting memorial.
The money was duly laid out, the lucky recipient thereof being one Mr. Hickey; and now, after a hundred years, the only people who can look with satisfaction upon the transaction must be they to whom Hickey bequeathed his money.
The sorrowing stone cherub in the foreground looks very much as though he had just undergone nursery correction.
More attractive is a good and very curious bit of wood carving affixed to the front of the organ.
The date is unknown, but its antiquity is probably not great.
It obviously represents King David, who, with a gilded crown upon his head, plays upon a dazzlingly gilded harp.
Near the door of the vestry hangs the elaborate genealogical tree of one W. Lee, who was five times Mayor of Abingdon, and lived to see 197 descendants. It is dated 1637.
In the vestry is a copy of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," together with a number of Bibles and books of homilies, all having still attached to them the ancient chains by which they were formerly secured.
The church registers go back to an unusually early period.

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, ABINGDON

Upon the south-western side of St. Helen's churchyard are the picturesque arcaded buildings which form the more ancient portion of the "Hospital of Christ" - a long low range of half-timbering extending to the river front, where it is joined by a more modern wing of stone.
Age has blackened the timber and barge-boardings, and in the sunshine the contrast between the chequer-work of the old and the grey stone of the newer buildings is exceedingly charming.
The porch is quite romantic, and such as one rarely sees save in a water-colour.
It is supported upon stout oaken piers, the heads roughly but effectively carved; at the partially-open sides is more carved work.
It has a steep roof with wide projecting eaves and a diamond-paned lattice in the gable.
Almost immediately behind rises, from an irregular red-tiled roof, the graceful carved cupola which lights the entrance hall.
When the wide door of stout oak, over which one could climb at need, stands open, the passer-by gets a delightful glimpse of a panelled hall, into which the sun streams not too glaringly through the cupola and the little lattices, imprinting quaint arabesques upon the floor and the black polished wainscot, and making life lovely for the six-and-thirty aged men and women maintained by the charity first instituted by the pious Brethren of the Holy Rood.
Over the porch are some curious paintings illustrative mainly of works of mercy.
One of them is a view of old Abingdon Cross; and another a portrait of Edward VI., in whose reign the hospital was refounded.
These buildings are strongly remindful of the better-known Leycester Hospital at Warwick, but they are not nearly so lofty.
This antique porch is on sunny days the favourite spot "where want and age sit smiling at the gate".
The interior of the hall is very quaint, and contains some sturdy furniture, suitable for the support of a giant in complete plate-armour.
A large table of oak with carved legs was presented, as an inscription upon the frame of the picture hanging over it records, by "Frauncis Little, one of ye governors of this hospital" in 1607.
In the Exchequer Chamber in the church is preserved a manuscript history of the hospital, written by good Master Little, with the title, "A Monument of Christian Munificence".
Here is another portrait of Edward VI., and a curious picture of the building of Abingdon Bridge.
It is of great age, dedicated, it would seem, to "Jefforye Barbur and John Howchion".
When the brethren of St. Cross first became a corporate body is now doubtful.
Francis Little in his history says that the foundation existed in 1388, and there is reason for supposing that it had come into being long before.
At the Dissolution the confraternity was abolished, but it was revived by Edward VI., and endowed with three-fourths of the old foundation.
The Charter enjoins upon the Governors that they are to keep in repair the four bridges over the Thames and the Ock, to provide food and lodging for fourteen poor persons, and to devote the surplus of their funds to other charitable uses.
These funds have grown to such a bulk that thirty-six poor people are now maintained, while Abingdon Grammar School has been rebuilt, and a public park given to the town out of the surplus.
Surely, roses should blossom upon the graves of those who founded and re-founded "the Hospital of Christ at Abingdon".

Near to this dreamy old-world churchyard is Ock Street, one of the longest and finest streets to be found in an English country-town.
It is broad as a boulevard, and is literally crowded with old Jacobean and Georgian houses, some of them so large as to be fairly called mansions.
The Berkshire shore is lined with pleasant houses for half a mile or so below Abingdon Bridge.
The towing-path is here upon the Oxford bank, and skirts rich meadows picturesquely studded with large shade-trees.
Away to the left lie heavy masses of woodland, such as engirdle the whole of the Thames Valley; on the facing bank are the straggling environs of Abingdon, having, when seen from this point, somewhat of the foreign aspect so often worn by these little waterside towns.

BELOW ABINGDON

But in less than a mile we are amid scenes that are very English.
The meadows at first are flat, which, the rather than a blemish, I esteem to be a beauty.
The perfection of sylvan and pastoral river scenery, as distinguished from the bold and rocky loveliness of some of our wilder English streams, demands flattish banks, the better to throw into relief the undulating fields and shimmering woodlands which so often close in a homely scene having for relief merely some grey church tower almost hidden among the lofty elms, and the mellowed ruddiness of a farmhouse gable.
A little below Abingdon the tiny Ock enters the stream, and so ends its independent existence.
Any time from eight to ten in the morning - for, oddly enough, boating-men are rarely up with the lark - camping-out parties may be seen engaged in the serious business of breakfasting, or in the lighter but less exhilarating task of washing-up the cups and saucers, and generally "making tidy" before the day's leisurely pull.
As a rule, however, the river is deserted during the whole of the forenoon, even in the height of the season, as, indeed, the towing-path always is, whether it be late or early - at least, upon this portion of the stream.
The river banks, from the bridge at Abingdon to Culham Lock, are very charming in summer, to those who are content with ordinary scenery, and do not expect a famous view on entering every reach.

CULHAM BRIDGE

[ That is the bridge over the downstream end of the Swift Ditch, now a non navigable backwater which bypasses Abingdon Lock, and was at one time the main channel. (Occasionally confused with Sutton Bridge below Culham Lock) ]

Nearing Culham, the river bends very sharply to the right, and just at the curve a white wooden bridge crosses a beautiful little back-water, brilliantly pied with water-lilies, and thickly bordered with graceful aquatic grasses.
Then come fields of standing corn, the sturdy ears sheltering the frail crimson poppies - wheat and tares intermingled.
From some hidden spot in the centre of the field comes the loud, harsh cry of the corn-crake, that bird so often heard and so seldom seen.
Sometimes the crop is the drooping oats or the "bold and bearded barley"; but whatever be the grain, there is the fat, solemn rook, who reluctantly wheels away from his farinaceous banquet, to hide for a few minutes in the long row of elms in the adjoining field.

CULHAM CUT

Close to Culham the stream divides, a broad rushy channel flowing past Sutton Courtney, with its venerable Edwardian Manor House and the well-known weirs, while a straight, narrow, and not very picturesque cut, makes direct for the Lock.

CULHAM

CULHAM CHURCH

In passing there is a very pretty glimpse of Culham Church, which stands out effectively from a background of trees, and looks in the distance the ideal of an old parish church.
A nearer view reveals that most of the building is very modern, and that even the square tower dates only from the days of William and Mary.
Culham is a pretty and interesting little place, and still happily preserves its village green.

CULHAM LOCK

A few yards below Culham Lock the river assumes its old proportions, the water from the deep millpool at Sutton, where there are fishes indeed, now forming the old main channel with the cut as a mere contributary.
Hereabouts there are usually one or two camping parties, the proximity of a lock-keeper's cottage being a convenience which none can appreciate so well as a tired oarsman.
Although the immediate banks continue flat, the country around grows more rugged, the meadows and cornfields become billowy, and sloping gently up long miles ahead, although apparently no farther distant than the next parish, is seen Wittenham Clump, with its smooth grassy sides and little grove of trees atop.
Hence away to Shillingford it is rarely out of sight, for the river winds so sinuously through the valley over which the Clump watches that between Clifton Hampden and Day's Lock it describes a perfect semicircle.
The Clump forms a majestic background to many a stretch of varied timber and parti-coloured fields.

APPLEFORD RAILWAY BRIDGE & CLIFTON LOCK

Something like a mile below Appleford Bridge commences another unlovely necessary cut - a kind of graduated penance in preparation for the severer supplice [ torture ] of Clifton Lock.
He who elects to see the river-land from the towing-path has a decided advantage over the oarsman, where these cuts and locks are concerned.
This particular cut is more tolerable than some of those which the exigencies of navigation have rendered necessary.
The Berkshire shore has a fringe of plantations and mossy creepered banks, which compensate somewhat for the nakedness of the Oxford bank at this point.
At the end of this straight channel is Clifton Lock.
The keeper's cottage is in summer a lovely picture, for it stands in a little garden ablaze with brilliant flowers of the old-fashioned stock viewed with disfavour by the scientific gardener; while the cottage walls are covered with creepers yellow and russet.
Just clear of the Lock the main stream re-enters the channel,

CLIFTON HAMPDEN

and a bend in the river's course reveals the heights of Clifton Hampden and the beauteous vale beneath.
The long, red-brick bridge of six pointed arches, which has only of late years superseded the ferry, is in itself a picturesque object.
The surrounding country is flat, and so is most of the village;

CLIFTON HAMPDEN CHURCH

CLIFTON HAMPDEN CHURCH

but the bold hill which rises with a sharp slope from the water is crowned by the church and the vicarage.
From the summit to the edge of the stream the bluff is densely timbered, and thick belts of woodland line the Oxford bank for some distance below the bridge.
The delightful little village relies upon Nature for all its charms, for it has no history.
Nor can it be said that the church is very interesting, save as a favourable example of Sir Gilbert Scott's early skill as a restorer.
Sir Gilbert's work here was done in 1844, when he was comparatively a young man.
The old work is really ancient, for Clifton Church was originally a chapelry served from Dorchester Abbey.
The reredos is in mosaic; but the most remarkable thing in the church is an altar-tomb to the late Mr. G.H.Gibbs, at whose cost the building was restored.
The recumbent marble figure is a portrait.
The churchyard is kept with unusual neatness, and numbers of the graves are covered with flowers.
Its altitude is such that it affords delightful views up the river towards Abingdon, and down towards Day's Lock and Sinodun Hill.
The serpentine course of the river is very striking as seen from this height; and even here, with the naked eye, Wittenham and Sinodun seem to bar the stream.
At Clifton Hampden, in the season, there is usually a house-boat or two moored among the masses of water-lilies which profusely strew the stream near the bridge, and a more charming spot, away from such "fashionable" places as Goring, Henley, or Maidenhead, could hardly be selected as the anchorage of these leviathans of the upper Thames.
The neighbourhood abounds in rural walks, and in subjects both for the pencil of the artist and the pen of the man of letters.

THE BARLEY MOW, CLIFTON HAMPDEN

One of the most charming "bits" at Clifton has neither been sketched nor described quite so often as it deserves to have been.
The "Barley Mow" is assuredly the oddest and quaintest of inns on the river.
It lies on the Berkshire bank, in a little roadside corner all to itself.
What its age may be it would be difficult to tell; but its high, overhanging roof is thatched and its walls are half-timbered.
The diminutive casements, about the size of the door of a rabbit-hutch, admit just enough of light to heighten the interior effect.
Broad masses of light are out of place within such venerable walls.
The brick-floored kitchen - or maybe it is the parlour - is delightfully snug; the walls panelled darkly all round; the honest raftered ceiling so low as to do away with the necessity ever to stand upon the naked wooden settles to reach things; the fireplace extending across one whole side of the room, the oddest imaginable cross between an old-fashioned ingle-nook open grate and a modern kitchen range; the chimney-piece garnished with many a brightly-burnished pot and pan.
No demure Phyllis makes her appearance; but the cider - we are in a great cider country - is nectar.
At the back of the inn is just such a queer little garden as Dickens loved to write about.
All the flowers were our great-grandmother's, and, indeed, modern daintinesses would sadly mar the antiquated aspect of this typical roadside inn of a day that is long past.

At Clifton Bridge the towing-path crosses to the Berkshire shore, and for the next two miles the scenery is, perhaps, the prettiest, with the exception of Clifton itself, between Abingdon and Wallingford.
The Oxford bank is clothed luxuriantly with trees, out of which now and again peeps, half unperceived, the canvas shelter of a camping party.
These occasional encampments are almost the only sign of life, so far as the banks of the river are concerned.
Between Clifton and Day's Lock the country is remarkably solitary.
The waterside meadows are nearly all empty; but here and there a herd of cattle browses leisurely, or, if it be high noon, shelters itself from the heat and the tormenting flies under the lee of the thick hedgerows.
Pedestrians are never seen.
That it is good to row upon a beautiful river, but undesirable to walk by the side of it, appears to be the popular idea; but despite the physical exhilaration and the æsthetic delight of the rhythmical swing of oars, the river can be seen best from the towing-path, and if the love of walking-tours had not very largely died out we might expect to see the banks of the upper Thames as much frequented as its waters.
It is often possible to pass between Clifton and Day's Lock without meeting either man or boat, which seems a little odd, since that reach is in high favour during the season.
To the walker upon the towing-path this silence and vacancy become oppressive, and the sudden splash of a water-rat striking out from among the rushes is quite startling.
The Berkshire shore is flattish here; but there are swelling uplands beyond, and the Wrekin-shaped Sinodun Hill looms quite close upon the left.

DORCHESTER, FROM LITTLE WITTENHAM

Presently there stands out from among the trees on the Oxford bank an old church with a very long nave and tall tower, with an unusual high-pitched red roof, topped by a vane.
That is the famous Abbey Church of Dorchester, the solitary remnant of the ancient grandeur of the olden capital of Wessex.

DAY'S LOCK & THE RIVER THAME

A little farther is Day's Lock, with the ferry between Little Wittenham and Dorchester, where, even in a season of drought, the water is unusually full and brimming, the result, perhaps, of the wedding near by of the little Thame with the more classic and magnificent Thames, or Isis, as the poets have preferred to call it.
This conceit owes its origin almost entirely to such comparatively modern poets as Warton and Drayton, though Spenser, in the "Færie Queen," seems to have originated the legend in somewhat of a backhanded way: -

The lovely bridegroom came,
The noble Thamis, with all his goodly traine,
But before him there went, as best became,
His auncient parents, namely, th' auncient Thame;
But much more aged was his wife than he,
The Ouze, whom men doe Isis rightly name.
Full weak and crooked creature seemed shee,
And almost blind through Eld, that scarce her way could see.

DORCHESTER

Nearly opposite Dorchester there is an eyot adorned by a remarkably fine chestnut, while between Clifton and Day's Lock are others which bear little save the humble, useful osier.
At Day's the towing-path crosses into Oxfordshire.
Dorchester, which makes a very picturesque appearance from the river, since it stands upon a greater elevation than the country through which we have passed, is about half a mile from the Lock.
The field-path, which runs for some distance through a most unpoetical turnip patch, skirts the famous Dyke Hills, the Roman fortifications upon which sheep most peacefully browse.
The fortified camp of which these earthworks formed part is supposed to have been guarded on one side by the Thames, on the other by the Thame, and must, consequently, have been of enormous strength.
Dorchester, which fell from its splendour and ceased to be a capital more than a thousand years ago, is a quaint little village, in which the antiquarian voyager can spend some hours of crowded interest.
Its three or four old streets are full of strange twists and oddly-gabled houses, and the number of old-fashioned inns is remarkable, it being remembered that the population of the place but slightly exceeds a thousand.
There was surely never a more complete fall from a high estate than that suffered by Dorchester.
Not only was it the capital of Wessex, but it was the seat of the great bishopric eventually removed to Lincoln; and the Venerable Bede records that Dorcinca was full of richly-garnished churches.
Twelve centuries and a half ago Cynegils, King of Wessex, was baptised there, as of right in his capital, by the sainted Birinus.
The bishopric, after being removed to Sidnacester [ I think Leicester ], was restored to Dorchester, and it was not until after the conquest that Lincoln was finally selected as the home of the Bishop-stool.

DORCHESTER ABBEY

The Abbey Church is the glory of the place, since it is not only exceedingly fine in itself, but is the sole survival of the dim ages in which Dorchester was a cathedral city, and the capital of one of the Heptarchical kingdoms.
The Church of Dorchester Abbey was undoubtedly built upon the site of the Saxon Cathedral, of which some fragments, such as the north wall of the nave, and an arch or two, probably formed part.
As it stands now, the church is a patchwork of styles, from the Norman to the Tudor.
It is of great size, the length from east to west being 183 feet, and the area over 10,000 square feet.
Dorchester churchyard has sometimes been considered handsome; but it is too ragged to be fairly so described.
Near the south door is an ancient churchyard cross, the shaft of which is very much dilapidated, but the head has been well restored.
The porch to the south door is Tudor work in stone, with a good timbered roof.
The interior of the church is not unremindful, at a general glance, of St. Albans Abbey, since the nave is entirely blocked by the tower.
Restoration was commenced by Sir Gilbert Scott; but there is so much to be done, and the cost of doing it is so considerable, that the work will probably not be finished for years to come.
At the bottom of the north aisle is a large collection of sculptured stones, which, no doubt, before the Dissolution, formed part of the monastic buildings.
They were mainly obtained from an old house in the village, which would seem to have been largely built with materials taken from the Abbey, and it is intended to build them into the fabric as opportunity offers.
The western end of the building is somewhat gloomy, a defect which might without difficulty be removed by the uncovering of the handsome west window, which has long been bricked up.
Dorchester has one of the very few leaden fonts of Norman workmanship which now remain to us: there is another at Long Wittenham, on the opposite side of the river.
Round the bowl are cut, in high relief, the figures of the eleven apostles, Judas being, of course, inadmissible.
What, had not the tower intervened, would have been the western end of the nave, forms an ante-church, which is used for the minor services.
A pillar in this chapel has some quaint carvings near the base.
One of the most ancient portions of the church seems to be the Lady Chapel, at the eastern extremity of the south aisle adjoining the chancel.
The altar here was erected in memory of Bishop Wilberforce, of Winchester.
There are four altar-tombs in the Lady Chapel, the survivors of probably a much larger number.
Two are to ladies; the others represent Crusaders.
The feet of each rest upon a lioncel [ a small heraldic lion ].
Close to these tombs is the brass of Richard Bewforest, to whose piety posterity owes the preservation of this Abbey Church.
In 1554 Master Bewforest purchased the church from the hands of the despoilers, paying therefor £140, which, although a goodly sum for his day, was assuredly not extravagant.
Here, too, is an unornamented brass to an undistinguished person, named Thomas Day, with the following odd epitaph, dated 1693: -

Sweet Death he came in Hast
& said his glass is run;
Thou art ye man i say,
See what thy God has done.

In the chancel there have been many fine and elaborately ornamented brasses, but only a few remain in their integrity.
One of the most perfect thus records another Bewforest: -
"Here lyeth Sir Richard Bewfforeste:
I pray thee give his sowl good rest."
This Richard was not a knight, but an ecclesiastic, as the brass, upon which he is represented with cope and crozier, proves; and the prefix was given him according to an ancient custom, of which we have an example in the person of Sir Oliver Martext, the priest in As You Like It.
On the north side of the chancel is the wonderful "Jesse Window," which has been so often described that it has become one of the best known of our ecclesiastical antiquities.
The ornamentation of the window takes the form of a pictorial pedigree in stone, the tree having its root in the body of Jesse, each progenitor of the line of David being represented by a small stone figure; but the effigies of Christ and His mother have disappeared.
Upon the glass of the window are somewhat rude representations of the chief members of the line of Jesse.
This very remarkable window is in good preservation, notwithstanding that it is now at least five centuries old.
A word must be said of the fine timbered roofs of the Abbey.
That of the nave, supported upon most graceful clustered columns, is really magnificent, while the groined roof of the Lady Chapel possesses a lightness and grace which such work often lacks.
There are still many brasses, together with an enormous number of flat stones in the church, but the majority of the brasses and incised stones have been damaged, apparently with wilful intent.
Here and there an elaborate matrix sadly suggests the treasures we have lost.
Against the lych-gate at the western end of the churchyard is one of the largest and most luxuriant chestnuts to be noticed even in a neighbourhood full of large chestnut trees.
The gate and the tree, with the great grey church for background, fashion themselves into a lovely picture.
Beyond the church and the quaint old houses there is nothing of interest in Dorchester save the building now occupied as a national school, which was formerly the grammar school.
The interior, full of great timber beams and joists, is very picturesque.
It is believed to have been the refectory of the Abbey, and an antiquity of some seven centuries is assigned to it.

SINODUN HILL

SINODUN HILL AND DAY'S LOCK

Opposite Dorchester is Sinodun Hill, which has been growing gradually nearer for several miles during our leisurely progress down-stream.
If it be good climbing weather - that is to say, not too hot - Sinodun should not be passed heedlessly by.
The climb is a stiffish one, but once the shelter gained of the little clump of trees atop, there is ample compensation for an exercise such as Englishmen are not usually afraid of.
From this eminence the country lies displayed as though upon a map.
The shining river twists and curvets like a snake in agony; upon its timbered banks repose tiny villages, distinguishable in the mass of foliage only by the vanes upon the steeples and the thin quivering lines of smoke which melt into nothingness just above the tree-tops; roads and railways look straight and uncompromising indeed beside the sinuous stream.
The country is multi-coloured - the fields green and brown and yellow, with here and there a great square of black woodland.
The sun seems to shine upon some and to leave others in shadow, while over all there move flecks of trembling light.
The view in the direction we are travelling is closed by swelling downs destitute of all colour but the dim grey of distance.
Down below us, near the weir, industrious anglers are barbelling or spinning for jack, for hence almost to Shillingford are fine fishing grounds.
Here the river bends somewhat towards Dorchester, and it is long ere we pass out of sight of the Abbey.
Upon the Berkshire shore are uplands, broad, swelling, and cultivated to the utmost rood.
These rolling uplands never look better than in haymaking or harvest time, when the cocks and sheaves are yellowing in the sunlight.
The regular, almost square, boundaries of the fields suggest a green and yellow chessboard, and at seedtime the mathematical furrows are as straight as though cut by a machine.
The nicety of vision, and the accuracy of touch with which a ploughman cuts a furrow are astonishing in one who usually has instinct and eye alone to guide him.
After all there is something intellectual in the following of the plough, and the peculiar qualities required of the ploughman are such that it is not altogether surprising that both science and letters have drawn notable recruits from the furrowed field.
Almost until we reach the next ferry, a couple of miles below Day's Lock, Dorchester still straggles along parallel to the river, and the last glimpse of its red roofs from a bend in the stream is exceedingly picturesque.

SHILLINGFORD

The towing-path ceases abruptly at the ferryman's quaint little cottage, and the venue for the pedestrian changes for a time into Berkshire.
The stream just here is very charming to the lover of rivers, for although both shores continue flat they are dotted with clumps of woodland, and the water's edge is gaily caparisoned with verdure.
The towing-path for a short distance grows almost wild for so highly civilised a country as that through which the Thames flows, and the pedestrian wades to the knees through rank brambly grass.

SHILLINGFORD BRIDGE

SHILLINGFORD BRIDGE.

A few more minutes and we reach Shillingford Bridge, with its four grey arches.
At the Berkshire end of the bridge is that pretty rural inn the "Swan," a favourite abiding place of boating parties which include ladies.
The little lawn is dotted with gay costumes of coolest tints and softest texture, for a lazy afternoon hour or two is not ungrateful upon the banks of Thames in the dog-days.
On the Oxford bank is a cluster of tiny cottages, each in an ample garden full of those brilliant old-fashioned flowers which the cottager loves so well.
The diminutive latticed windows are garnished, too, with geraniums and fuchsias; honeysuckle climbs to the not very lofty gables, and the little trellis-work porches are aglow with the cool foliage and delicate tints of clematis.
The road is thickly bordered with elm and beech, and beyond, shining brilliantly in the afternoon sun, are long red ranges of barns and cow-sheds, darkly-roofed and golden-walled ricks of last year's hay, side by side with the brand-new thatch of the yellow stack that has just left the thatcher's hand.
From the bridge itself there is a pleasant view up and down the river over what our grandfathers would have called a "fine champaign country," flat and pastoral on the Oxford shore, but swelling into bold wooded undulations on the opposite bank - such a stretch of varied scenery as most becomingly wears the sober darkling tints of autumn.
When the wind swirls the brown sapless leaves into the turbid river, and the bare stubbles echo to the crack of the breechloader, Nature hereabouts has that distinct autumnal charm which is never more delightful than in a sylvan and pastoral landscape.

SHILLINGFORD TO BENSON

From Shillingford to Bensington the towing-path is again in Oxfordshire.
The river banks become more frequented, and the complete angler abounds; for most renowned baskets are constantly obtained from this pretty stretch of water.
The eyots are luxuriant with osiers, and in the osier harvest punt after punt lies heavily laden with the lithe, flexible sticks which the men cut and tie into bundles with astonishing deftness and rapidity.
Many of these little osier-covered islands are surrounded with white and yellow water-lilies, which seem to have an affection for such a situation.

BENSON CHURCH

The square tower of Bensington Church has a venerable appearance; but the really ancient church has been restored into newness.
Consequently, nothing remains of any great interest; but, most happily, the reforming zeal of the re-builders stopped short of interfering with the handsome chancel-arch.
On the south wall of the nave is an inscription which, from its very oddity, deserves to be recorded: -

M. S.
To the pious memory
of Ralph Quelch and Jane his wife
who slept / now sleepe - together
in 1 - bed by ye space of 40 yeares / grave till Ct. shall awaken them.
He / She - fell asleep Ano. Dni. - 1629 / 1619
being aged - 63 /59 - yeares.
For ye fruit of their - labours / bodies they left
ye new inn twice built at their own charge /one only son and two daughters
Their son being liberally bred in ye University of Oxon
thought himself bound to erect this small monument
of - their / his
piety towards - God / them
Ano. Dni. 16....

Epitaphs in this form are by no means uncommon; but it would be difficult to find one of quainter conception.
Even the surname of the worthy proprietors of the "New Inn" has a Dickens-like grotesqueness.
Bensington is interesting to lovers of English literature as having belonged to the Chaucers, from whom it descended to the De la Poles.

BENSON LOCK

Bensington Lock is below the village, and oarsmen pulling up to Oxford have learned to beware of the dangerous cross-current at the weir.
Near the lock the tow-path crosses again to the Berkshire shore.
Hence away to Wallingford the country becomes much more picturesque.
The Oxford bank is most profusely wooded; groves of willows and alders edge the stream; while farther ashore glades of elm and chestnut perfume the air.
Overshadowed by trees, whose branches intertwine, is a pretty red-brick boat-house, into which as we pass, disappears a gaily-freighted boat, seeming to pass from brilliant sunshine and rippling river into the dark recesses of some dusky cavern.

WALLINGFORD

Then the woodland opens out, the scenery becomes park-like, and through the clumps of oak which stud the foreground we get glimpses of Howberry Park, a more than usually handsome Elizabethan house, the successor of a hardly more picturesque Jacobean building destroyed a century ago by the flames which await every country-house, be it soon or be it late.
Howberry Park, once the seat of the Blackstones, lies in the parish of Crowmarsh Giffard, almost opposite the town of Wallingford.
The vestry-door of Crowmarsh Church is riddled with bullets - reminders, it is said, of the last siege of Wallingford, at which time this door hung in the west entrance to the church.
The first view of Wallingford is not very prepossessing.
Against the bridge rises the tall and unutterably inelegant spire of St. Peter's Church, the hideous product of a mind unhappily diverted from law to ecclesiology.

St. PETER'S CHURCH AND WALLINGFORD BRIDGE.

Wallingford possesses interesting memories, although its visible antiquities are not numerous.
The town was of consequence in Roman times, and a line of splendidly-preserved earthworks, thrown up by Latin-tongued warriors, is to be seen in a field near the railway station.
The Castle of Wallingford underwent sieges innumerable, since its comparative nearness to London rendered its possession of importance to each side in the dynastic wars of the Middle Ages.
It was held for the Empress Maud; it resisted stoutly in the behalf of that clever scoundrel, John Lackland; it was garrisoned for Charles I., but was compelled to surrender, and the Parliament made short work of its keeps and battlements.
The fortress was not entirely destroyed, and the mutilated remains are carefully preserved in the gardens of the present Wallingford Castle.
In the museum at the Castle there is an interesting collection of antiquities relating to the town and the fortress.
The importance or the piety of the town must have been far greater previous to the Cromwellian civil wars than either is now, since there were then fourteen churches, whereas there are now but three.
Beyond one or two tablets to local benefactors, there is nothing interesting in St. Mary's Church on the Market Place.
St. Peter's is the burial-place of Sir William Blackstone, "one of the judges of His Majesty's Superior Courts at Westminster," and Recorder of Wallingford, who built the flint tower, with its uncomfortable spire - both conspicuous monuments of the architectural decadence - and died in 1780.
In the Council Chamber of the Town Hall there is a modern portrait of the judge in robes and bag-wig.
It is charitable to suppose that his lordship's legal acumen was superior to his architectural taste.
The most interesting tomb in the churchyard is that of Edward Stennett, the friend of Bunyan, who may have died any time between 1705 and 1795, since the third figure of the date has become obliterated.
Among the portraits in the Town Hall is one of Archbishop Laud ascribed to Holbein.
The date of 1635 upon the painting indicates that the author of the ascription was daring even beyond the usual audacity of such persons.
The presence of Laud's portrait is explained by the double fact of his being a Berkshire man and a benefactor to the town.
In common with most of the towns in the Thames Valley, Wallingford contains many good red-brick houses, chiefly of Georgian date.

WALLINGFORD LOCK

[ Wallingford Lock /Chalmore Lock / Chalmore Hole / Old Wallingford Lock - was built in 1838 and removed in 1883. ]

The river, after leaving Wallingford, widens a little, and there is a continuation of the park-like meadows.
A short distance down stream is Wallingford Lock, which is a lock only in name.
Here the towing-path deserts the Oxford for the Berkshire shore,

MONGEWELL

and the long and lovely reach which ends at Moulsford Bridge begins.
This spot marks the commencement of the stretch of meadow, hills, and woodland, which makes the delight of Goring and Pangbourne.
The Oxfordshire bank is not merely studded, but is thickly overhung, with trees and undergrowth, beneath whose shade many a boat is moored for those aquatic flirtations which are among the most enchanting of summer diversions.
Directly one gets clear of Wallingford the wooded heights about Streatley come in view, with a glowing "scarf of sunshine athwart their breast".
On the Oxford bank, halfway to North Stoke, more or less, is Mongewell House, a delicate bit of white in a setting of green lawns and venerable trees.
Once Mongewell was an episcopal retirement, to which the Bishops of Durham resorted for relief from the fatigues of administration.
It was admirably suited to such a purpose, since it is a silent and contemplative spot - the more peaceful, perhaps, from the contiguity of the little Church of Newton Murren, a marvel of the miniature, with a tiny chancel, and a belfry no bigger than a dovecote.

Any monotony there may be from this spot to the ferry at North Stoke is relieved by the Streatley Hills, looming ever larger as the boat swings down the reach, and by the fine clumps of timber which line the river bank on each side.
Many a sweet rural picture is passed on the oarsman's highway between Newton Murren and Moulsford Bridge, and in such a country all seasons of the year, and all times of the day, have their charm.
The early-morning hours upon the riverside provide unending delight to the real lover of nature.
Everything is fresh, crisp, and blithe, for the life of the fields and hedgerows is busy and bustling long before the earliest man's breakfast-time.
The ideal climate, cool but not cold, exhilarating, buoyant, redolent of the delight of life, would be a perpetual summer morning, such as it is from five until nine.
Every sight gratifies the eye.
Then the dew is still heavy upon the hedgerows and the tall aquatic grasses, and where there is a bit of furzy country, there is a tear in every golden flower of gorse.
The atmosphere is clearer and more elastic than later in the day.
The far-distant rush of trains, the only reminder that there is a world beyond the horizon, and that its daily fret has begun, which at noon is a mere rumble, in this crisp air is sharp and almost shrill.
The ring of the scythe under the whetstone many fields away sounds but a few yards off, and the metallic clang of the stable clock at some country house, hidden behind the belts of woodland, half-an-hour's walk as the crow flies, is distinct as the raspy cry of the corn-crake in the yellowing wheat near by.
It is hard to say at what season of the day this stretch down to Moulsford Bridge is most charming.
To my taste it is the early morning; but poets and lovers would probably prefer sunset, not to say moonlight.

MOULSFORD RAILWAY BRIDGE

[ Built by Brunel for the Great Western Railway in 1839
and widened (doubled) in 1892 ]

Against Moulsford Bridge there is a lovely eyot, edged with flags and rushes, and bushy with willows and alders.
In time of drought the furthermost arch on the Berkshire shore is not uncommonly dry.
There is a path on each side of the river just here; that on the Berkshire bank is the more enticing, for it is quite romantically wild and undulating; but the towing-path proper crossed into Oxfordshire at Stoke Ferry a little further up.
It is well worth risking trespass and climbing to the railway bridge for the sake of the fine view up and down the river. [NO!]
Looking back the way we have come, the country is rich, pastoral, and full of trees; ahead the prospect, while equally sylvan, is far more varied.
The river winds but little, and the long reach past Moulsford Ferry is in sight for some distance, but the banks are more park-like, and the land begins to swell towards the background of hills that closes in the view, the outposts of the range of downs which beautifies the river beyond Streatley.
The brimming, almost straight, reach of water immediately below the bridge is one of the most interesting spots on the river to the muscular generation, since upon it are rowed the trial eights of the Oxford University Boat Club.
Close to the bridge the perch-fisher is usually in great force, for around the eyot the perch dwells in numbers.

MOULSFORD AND 'THE BEETLE AND WEDGE'

MOULSFORD FERRY.

It is but a short distance hence to the Ferry, where the water is remarkably deep and limpid.
Opposite thereto is the oddly-named "Beetle and Wedge" Inn, a quaint, three-gabled old place, overgrown with ivy and shaded by clumps of luxuriant elms.
"The Beetle" is a grateful halting-place, and its brick-floored parlour a cool retreat from the glare of the outer world.
There is usually a garrulous villager or two, in the long-descended smock-frock beloved of the older generation of peasants even in these changeful days, who will pause in the discussion of their mugs of brown home-brewed to greet the stranger with the old-fashioned courtesy which still happily clings to their class.
The "Beetle and Wedge" is an odd old place, and although not nearly so original as the "Barley Mow" at Clifton, it has the low roofs and capacious fireplaces which add so much to the comfort of an ancient hostel.
It is really astonishing how large a number of our old wayside inns have survived the crushing blow dealt them by the abolition of the stage-coach.
There they stand still, with their venerable gables, handsome red roofs, and ample chimneys, eloquently suggestive of warmth and good cheer for tired travellers.
In a comfortable old-fashioned inn the crusty loaf, the hunch of well-seasoned Cheshire, and the tankard with "a good head to it", like David Copperfield's birthday treat, have a zest and flavour which are always lacking elsewhere; the result, no doubt, of their being usually eaten during the exhilaration following upon physical exercise.
These ancient Thames-side inns possess a charm peculiar to themselves, due largely to their lovely surroundings and to the river flowing beneath their windows.

CLEEVE LOCK

From the "Beetle and Wedge" to Streatley and Goring Bridge, the goal of our pilgrimage in this chapter, the towing-path keeps to the Berkshire bank.
As we near Cleeve Lock the scenery becomes yet more sylvan.
The river is densely lined with trees, the more especially on the Oxford shore, and the stream winds just enough for picturesqueness.
Groups of splendid beeches dot the country, and the water is enlivened by many a boatful of flannelled rowers and pink-vested sirens.
Ladies appear to have recognised, with intuitive taste, that pink and white are two of the most effective colours for river wear, and the Thames, in all the fashionable reaches, owes much of its vivacity to the brilliant hues of its attendant water-nymphs.
However solitary the river may be in some parts, as between Clifton and Dorchester, for instance, there is enough of life and movement within hail of Goring.
The neighbourhood of Cleeve Lock is a favourite haunt for house-boats and campers, since there is nothing prettier on that side of Abingdon until such famous spots as Henley and Maidenhead are reached.
The house-boats which take up their moorings hereabouts are usually of the larger and more elaborate pattern.
The little muslined windows are gaily decked with flowers, there is a miniature flower-garden upon the flat roof, and where the roof overhangs are suspended Chinese lanterns, gorgeous with many a brilliant stripe and spot.
A graceful white-robed figure, in a coquettish pink sash, seated in the stern, is not the least attractive object in the landscape.

GORING LOCK, GORING AND STREATLEY

The roar of the Streatley weirs below is plainly heard, and many are the lovely glimpses of the brimming, rushy river between the lock and the bridge.
Overhead rise, close at hand, the broad, rolling hills, upon which the sun casts shade and shine in successive flecks.
The clouds, alternately deep blue and flaky-white, seem to cast their moving reflections upon the crest of the hills, for the gilded sunshine melts with delicate gradations into soft, shimmering shadow.
Half a mile or so below Cleeve Lock the stream divides, the cut to the left going to Goring Lock and the main channel to Streatley.
From the point of divergence to Streatley and Goring Bridge is but a brief pull, and few pilgrims of the Thames will desire to push on without halting for a while at this pretty village.

STREATLEY MILL

STREATLEY MILL.

Near the bridge is a mill, fed from the river, looking very picturesque with its steep gables and high-set dormer windows.
The weirs here are favourite sketching grounds, and almost daily in summer and early autumn easels are pitched in the wise represented in the final illustration to this chapter.
These weirs are exemplars of the picturesque.
Roughly built up with stone and stakes, they are overgrown with furzy vegetation, to which the water, as it pours foaming down the cascade, forms a charming contrast.
There are few prettier glimpses of Thames scenery than are to be had from the long white toll-bridge which connects Goring with Streatley.
Looking down are the thick woodlands about Cleeve Lock, with the rich, timbered meadows on the Berkshire bank.
Upward, towards Goring and Pangbourne, the course of the river is seemingly stemmed by the downs, which are covered with herbage and timbered to the water's edge.
The weirs, with their tumbling waters, and the little eyots, cumbered with tall osiers, add to the picturesque diversity of the scene.
The twin villages themselves are embosomed in foliage, which in the wane of summer takes many changing tints.
Although it is not a very distinguished spot, historically speaking, Streatley has far-reaching memories.
Ina, King of Wessex, is mentioned in the Cartulary of Abingdon Abbey as having given a piece of land there in 687.
After the Conquest the manor was part of the rich booty secured by that bold brigand Geoffrey de Mandeville.

STREATLEY CHURCH

The church, which nestles among some grand old trees at the foot of the village, near the waterside, is ancient but hardly picturesque.
Its patron, oddly enough, is doubtful, but is believed to be either St. Mary or St. John the Baptist.
The massive square tower is well preserved and dignified.
There is some uncertainty as to the date of the church, but it appears to have been built by Pone, Bishop of Sarum, in the first or second decade of the thirteenth century.
He it was who endowed it, and some of the architectural details are similar to those in the bishop's own famous cathedral.
The oldest funeral inscription in the church is upon a brass, dated 1440, in memory of Elizabeth Osbarn.
This brass, like one or two others, is very well preserved, and still bears the full-length figure of the lady.
Large families appear to have been very common in the Thames Valley in the olden times, as numberless inscriptions in riverside churches testify; and it is not surprising to find here a brass, dated 1603, to a parent of eleven daughters and six sons.

The village has a pleasant street on the brow of the hill, with some good old houses shaded by older trees.
Streatley is a delightful place to halt for the night on a boating or walking excursion.
Its material advantages are that it has capital accommodation for the tired walker and rower, and that the proximity of Goring Station makes it easy to bring up the heavy luggage, without which ladies are not happy, even on the river.
Of its more æsthetic attractions I have already spoken.
To the dweller in towns it is unspeakably delicious to be lulled to sleep and gently awakened by the musical plash of the weirs, while a stroll at dusk along the river bank is full of delights.
In the gloaming the ruminating, sweet-breathed kine loom mistily as they lie sociably grouped under the lee of a protecting hedge.
On the river twinkle through the gathering night the lamps of the house-boats, the Chinese lanterns, depending from the overhanging roofs, glowing through their fantastic filaments like great transparent fire-flies.
And but for the rush of the weirs, the dip of a belated oar, and an occasional ring of laughter from the huge, blackly-outlined boats, the night is silent.

J. PENDEREL-BRODHURST.

THE THAMES AT STREATLEY.

CHAPTER 4, STREATLEY TO HENLEY by W. SENIOR

Engraving: Thames at Streatley, Streatley & Goring, Map: Streatley & Goring, Engraving: Goring from the toll gate, The Grotto, [Gatehampton Railway Bridge], Basildon Ferry, Site of former Hart's Lock, Osier Farm, Whitchurch Lock, Engraving: Whitchurch Church & Mill, Hardwick, Mapledurham, Engraving: Mapledurham Church & Mill, Purley, The Roebuck, Poplar & Appletree Eyots, St Mary's Island, Above Caversham Bridge, Caversham Bridge, Engraving: Flooded Meadows, From Caversham Bridge, Simon De Montfort Island, Above Caversham Lock, Engraving: Thames At Reading, From The Old Clappers, Reading Abbey, River Kennet, Engraving: Sonning-on-Thames, Engraving: Sonning Weir, Below Sonning, Shiplake Village, River Loddon, St Patrick's Stream, Shiplake Lock, Engraving: Shiplake, A Camping out party, The George And Dragon, Wargrave, Wargrave, Hennerton Backwater, Engraving: Hennerton Backwater Lilies, Bolney Islands, Park Place Henley, Park Place Boathouse, Marsh Lock, Fishing, Below Marsh Lock

STREATLEY AND GORING

STREATLEY TO HENLEY

"The village swarms with geniuses and their æsthetically dressed wives",
was the touching lament written in "Our River" by Mr. Leslie, R.A., with regard to the Berkshire village of Streatley.
The sentence is, in some senses, both a description of the place as you may see it at almost any time during the summer season, and an indication of the reason of its popularity amongst artists.
No doubt it is the fashion in the sketching months for mere idlers at the palette to saunter and pose up and down the village street, in company with the strangely-dressed women-kind who some years ago provoked an outburst from a Royal Academician.
But it is also, and has long been, the resort of genuine workers with the brush, who make Streatley their temporary home because, in the long white bridge, shady backwaters, lively weir, busy mills, woods, and hills, they find materials worthy of their ambition and their care.
In the Thames Valley this portion of the river may be pronounced the Mecca of landscape painters.
Streatley, however, is the fashion, because it is honestly deserving of such a distinction.
Unlike many popular stations, it does not owe repute to one distinguishing attraction, but to many advantages which, in combination, raise the village to a high position upon the catalogue of places to be enjoyed, talked about, sketched in water colours, immortalised in oil, and haunted by the inoffensive people referred to in the first line of this chapter.
Streatley receives more assistance from Goring, however, than is generally acknowledged in set phrase.
The Oxfordshire village on the [right] bank is, indeed, as by common consent, ignored in conversation, the word Streatley doing duty for both sides.
The two communities are separated, not only by the river, which, after the straight length above, widens out into unusual breadth, but by the toll-bridge, which fixes a coin of the realm as an additional barrier between the few hundreds of persons who constitute the respective populations of Goring and Streatley.
The villages possess certain characteristics in common.
To each is allotted a mill.
That of Goring is the more modern, and probably best furnished with appliances for contributing to the trade and commerce of the country, and its rapid little stream is marked “private” to warn off the ubiquitous angler who may look with longing eye upon the shoals of barbel which congregate in its deep strong current.
The mill at Streatley is quite another affair - time-stained, decidedly picturesque in its antique pattern of architecture, and maintaining to this day a simple half door, suggestive of -

The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,
The mealsacks on the whiten'd floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal.

The country behind Goring is stamped with strong characteristics by the receding hills, which soon develop into the historic Chiltern range; and at the rear of Streatley we mount, direct from the village, the grassy sides of the chalk downs of Berkshire, which, geologists maintain, were once a continuation of the Chilterns.
The lock and weir are on the Goring side, but the distinction is to some extent nominal, since, standing upon the crown of the long wooden bridge, it will be seen that there are two weirs and backwaters, imparting a special animation to the character of the river.
The eye wanders with delighted satisfaction from the merry streams to the reedy eyots, to the grand trees of the one side and the osiers and green meadows of the other, while weirs and backwaters play and plash throughout the livelong day.
Above the lock, the Thames, after broadening for the express purpose, throws an arm each to Goring and Streatley, and the Goring weir, within the distance of half a mile, is the primary cause of several of those sequestered backwaters which add so many potent and diverse charms to the Thames.
The stream issuing from the Streatley mill is too near, for proper effect, to the spectator who stands upon the bridge; and requires to be looked at from the meadow, to which the tow-path crosses at the bridge from Berkshire to Oxfordshire.
While at Goring there are many private grounds adorning the bank, with a rich background of shrubbery, ornamental walks, gay flower-beds, and pleasant residences, at Streatley we have the inn, the boat-builders' and timber-yard, and the pretty cottage gardens of the waterside and of the straggling street extending therefrom up towards the foot of the downs.
The toll-bridge invites excellent acquaintance with the river at close quarters, that down stream being exceptionally fine; but it is the high land sheltering either Streatley or Goring which commands rare birdseye views of the river and adjacent country.

Streatley is supposed to have derived its name from Icknield Street, a Roman road continued from the other side by a ford.
The cartulary of the Abbey of Abingdon refers to a gift of land at "Stretlea" by the King of Wessex who ruled A.D.687.
Domesday Book deals with the manor, whose tithes at the time of the production of Magna Charta were under the assignment of Herbert Pone, Bishop of Sarum, who probably built and endowed the church, which has lately been restored, and whose square tower is always a distinctive object amidst the trees.
The neighbourhood centuries ago obtained a reputation for health-giving qualities, and one of the memorial brasses in the church, dated 1603, incidentally bears testimony thereto by recording the virtues of an inhabitant who had six sons and eleven daughters.
More than a hundred years since a medicinal spring at Goring was somewhat famous for its powers of healing, and Plot, the historian, mentions the water of "Spring Well" as celebrated for its curative properties in certain cutaneous disorders.

GORING, FROM THE TOLL GATE

The church at Goring, close to the river, is a historically interesting as well as picturesque structure.
The grey square tower, with its round-headed windows divided into two lights by a central pillar, bespeaks its venerable age, and gives promise of the specimens of Norman and Early English architecture to be found in and around the edifice.
Built in the reign of Henry II., dedicated to Thomas à Becket, and enlarged when King John tried to rule the country, it was connected with an Augustinian nunnery, of which traces still exist; and the remains of a priory have been built into a farmhouse some two miles from the village.
The body of the church is singularly composite in its character.
To its one lofty original Norman aisle without chancel, a north aisle, porches, and other appurtenances, have been at different times added.

A road ascending from Streatley skirts Common Wood, and at its highest point opens out a magnificent panorama of Thames Valley.
The tow-path, however, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, now runs along the Oxfordshire bank, and the line of pedestrian traffic is therefore on that side.
The short distance intervening between the banks lends undoubted enchantment to the shady recesses and warblings of the feathered songsters of Common Wood.

THE GROTTO

When you have re-crossed by the wooden bridge towards the southern end of the hilly wood, the scene changes.
Admirably situated at a bend of the stream stands the substantial, and the reverse of hidden, modern mansion termed the Grotto, surrounded by a clean-shaven lawn, which is intersected by gravelled walks, one of which follows the bank of the Thames, and is o'er-canopied with trees.
From the sharp and picturesque curve of the river the bold round-headed hill of Streatley, the cosy village, the broad, divided river, and the Norman tower and delightful grounds of Goring, stand out a clear broad picture, which is almost suddenly lost round the bend studded by the eyots below the Grotto grounds.
The undulating chalk lands, rich in corn, roots, or pasture, as the exigencies of crop rotation may require, and dotted here and there by dark clumps of firs and larches, are absorbed opposite the Berkshire village of Basildon by Hart's Wood.
The trees fringe the Thames closely, and densely clothe the wooded steeps.
At all seasons these fine hanging plantations are fair to see; but there are special effects in spring and autumn, the intermixture of larches, at the former period, giving the wood a glow of dainty colour before other trees have put forth their leaves, and the abounding beeches, elms, oaks, and chestnuts, when mellow October comes round, making it equally conspicuous by the wondrous tints of decay.

[ GATEHAMPTON RAILWAY BRIDGE ]

[ Built by Brunel in 1839, widened in 1892 ]

BASILDON FERRY

The tow-path terminates for the time being abruptly opposite the snug village of Basildon; this may be gained by enlisting the services of the ferryman, who dwells in the solitary cottage [rebuilt 1891] under a line of full-headed pollards.
The village and even its church are half-hidden in foliage, and there is an effective background formed by the plantations of Basildon Park.

Site of HART'S LOCK

[ A weir and eventually gates were here. The earliest refence in 1580.
It was in decay in 1811 ]

Passing peeps of the house are vouchsafed as we descend the river, steering by the Berkshire side of the group of islets in the middle.
The parted stream marks the site of yet another Hart's Lock (Hart's Old Lock), of which no token remains.
The chalk downs still appear on the Berkshire side, and the ridge that maintained Hart's Wood swerves in unison with the course of the river, and, well covered with wide-spreading oaks, shelters Coombe Lodge from the north and east.

OSIER FARM

[ George Leslie, "Our River", 1881, goes into detail about this with delightful pictures ]

The osier beds of the Thames give employment to numbers of women and children, and maintain a distinct riverside trade.
On a recent visit I was fortunate in witnessing the operations of an osier farm, thus described in my note-book:—
"The men, women, and children clustered on the farther shore, busily engaged in an occupation which is not at first apparent, come upon you with a surprise as you enter the next meadow.
Out of the river formal growths of tall green sheaves seem to flourish within a ring fence.
There is a rude building, half shed and half cottage, at the mouth of a gully, and in an open space between it and the Thames the above-mentioned people are working.
Proceeding down the path the mystery gradually unfolds.
We are facing an osier farm.
The tall slender sheaves are bundles of withies that have been reaped from the islands and osier beds, and punted to this depôt.
Here, in a square enclosure, they are planted en masse in the water, and the cut branches make the best they can of divorcement from the parent root, and preserve their vitality until they are required for use.
The girls and boys are very handy at the operation of peeling.
They take up a withy from the bundle last landed from the pound, draw it rapidly through a couple of pieces of iron fixed to a stand, and in a twinkling the bright green osier has become a snow-white wand."
This humble colony of workers, about whom little is generally known, is one of many engaged in an out-of-the-way industry, hidden from the eyes of the world in some nook of the Thames.
It is the first which meets our observation on the journey from Oxford.
But even this simple form of industry has challenged the attention of the scientific.
At the Inventions Exhibition of 1885 at South Kensington, an apparatus for willow-peeling was shown amongst the labour-saving machines.

WHITCHURCH LOCK

Whitchurch Lock, two miles and a half below Basildon Ferry, is the halting-place for Pangbourne, the twin villages of Whitchurch and Pangbourne occupying similar positions, and enjoying the same type of communication as Goring and Streatley.
St.
Mary's Church, before its restoration, must have been a remarkably quaint building, and its singular wooden steeple attracts a considerable amount of attention even now.
Amongst the curiosities in the interior, besides the memorial windows of stained-glass, is a monument to a sixteenth-century lord of the manor of Hardwicke, and his dame, represented kneeling at a prie-dieu; and a tablet with the following very original inscription: -

To Richard Lybbe, of Hardwick, Esq., and Anne Blagrave
united in sacred wedlock 50 years
are here againe made one by death
she yielded to yt change Jan. 17, 1651,
which he embracied Jvly 14, 1658.

EPITAPH.
He, whose Renowne, for what completeth Man,
Speaks lowder, better things, than Marble can:
She, whose Religious Deeds makes Hardwick's Fame,
Breathe as the Balme of Lybbe's Immortall Name,
Are once more Joyned within this Peacefull Bed;
Where Honour (not Arabian-Gummes) is spred,
Then grudge not (Friends) who next succeed 'em must
Y'are Happy, that shall mingle with such Dust.

The resemblance of the twin villages of Pangbourne and Whitchurch to the dual communities with whose concerns this chapter opened is sustained in several features.
The reach immediately above Pangbourne, which is one of the very lovely stations of the Thames, is straight and uninteresting.
The cut on the Whitchurch shore makes an abrupt curve to the lock, and the breadth of the river above the wooden toll-bridge, own cousin to that at Streatley, and the two islands side by side near the lock, produce a vivacious backwater, and a fine weir-pool, twenty-five feet deep, abounding in holes, eddies, and scours intimately known to London anglers, to whom Pangbourne is as much the object of worship as Streatley is the haven of desire to the artists.
The wooden bridge, as at the last-named station, is the best coign of vantage from which to obtain adequate views of the three distinct streams, which gallop in joyous ebullitions of foam from the obstructions planted in the channel.
A goodly current rushes from the very new-looking mill on the Whitchurch shore.

WHITCHURCH CHURCH AND MILL.

The lower part of the church is concealed by trees, but clear above the rooks' nests in the swaying tops may ever be seen the wooden spire.
The turbulent pool at Pangbourne weir may best be studied from the timber-yard on the Berkshire side, and there is a subsidiary weir which assists the larger body to create a homely and miniature delta before the scattered forces are collected in one uninterrupted volume of water at the bridge.
The scenery at Pangbourne is not less charming than that of Streatley, and it is in both places of a character peculiar to the hilly country through which the Thames now flows.
A wide-spreading prospect of the valley may be obtained from Shooter's Hill.
Both Whitchurch and Pangbourne lay claim to a past history of some importance, but the old church, save the red-brick tower, which only dates from 1718, was replaced in 1865 by the present building; and this contains, amongst certain architectural qualities, an oaken pulpit, probably of the time of Elizabeth, carved in arabesques.
The Pang bourne, which gives a name to the village, is a pretty trout stream joining the brimming river, straight from the village, at the tail of the noisy weir, and coursing with its overflow down the gravelly shallow.

The undulating chalk hills, prolific of agreeable changes in the scenery, continue without cessation for many miles below Pangbourne, but on the opposite side we have once more the flat meadows, neat farms, and humble cottages of agricultural Berkshire.
The Thames, which had arrived at Pangbourne by a south-easterly course, moves for a short distance from west to east along a straight and deep-running reach.
The recurring woods on the left are a welcome foil to the level land on the right, and the distant landscapes are now very striking.

HARDWICKE HOUSE

Under the hill on the Oxfordshire side, about a mile and a half below Pangbourne, Hardwicke House, a notable specimen of the Tudor manor-house, is a conspicuous feature.
From the meadow on the opposite shore you have a perfect view of this most picturesque exterior.
The colour of the brickwork has deepened, in the course of time, to the darkest of red; and its gables and clustering chimneys are clearly defined against the screen of noble elms which intervene between the house and the north wind, and cover the slopes behind it.
The trim terrace is raised safely above the river; old yew, cedar, oak, and elm-trees cast long shadows upon the mossy turf, and indicate alleys and bowers such as those in which Charles I. spent some of the time passed by him at Hardwicke, "amusing himself with bowls" and other sports.
Numbers of the trees upon the lawn, and some of the cool, quiet nooks of its shrubberies, are, no doubt, precisely what they were two hundred years ago.

MAPLEDURHAM

MAPLEDURHAM: THE CHURCH AND THE MILL.

Hardwicke House is, however, but an item in the catalogue of strong and varying attractions of the section of the Thames which began with Streatley, and which may be said to end at Mapledurham, something less than a mile farther down.
Many lovers of the River Thames declare that, take it all in all, there is no sweeter spot from source to sea than this.
In 1883 the hand of renovation was laid upon one of the overfalls, introducing of necessity an element of change; but the lock, weir, and lasher, the great bay of swirling water by them formed when there is no scarcity of supply, the backwaters, brook, and shallows have not been interfered with.
As of yore, the whispering trees overhang the swift current, the lazy lilies wave in the tranquil backwater, and the rare old mill, first, perhaps, of its class upon the river, remains, like the face of a familiar friend, to greet the visitor, who, with each returning season, will assuredly, on the moment of arrival, bestow his earliest attention upon it.
Mapledurham has, indeed, an almost unrivalled collection of good things to offer in the grounds of Purley on the west and those of the Elizabethan mansion on the east.
Mapledurham House, largely concealed behind the foliage, is not at first so visible to the passer-by as Hardwicke; but it is too celebrated as a genuine example of Elizabethan architecture, and too well worthy of deliberate examination, to be neglected.
The house was built in 1581 by Sir Michael Blount, who was Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and in the Blount family it has ever since remained.
The name is a corruption of Mapulder-ham, and mapulder was the old English designation of the maple-tree.
The glorious avenue of nearly a mile in length by which the front of the house is reached is, however, of handsome elms, but around the mansion are grouped poplars, oaks, beeches, and firs in picturesque profusion.
From the right bank below the lock the gables, bays, oriels, roofs, and decorated chimneys, amidst such surroundings, constitute a striking picture.
In the house are secret rooms and passages, supposed to have been used in the time of the Civil War by the Royalists for the concealment of priests or soldiers.
By-and-by, in resuming your voyage down the river, Mapledurham House becomes the central object of another type of picture, composed of the delightful old mill, the curious church tower, the symmetrical trees, and the bright streams gathering from between the islands, and fresh from the mill race, and so continuing the sober volume of the Thames by Purley, and parallel with the railway.
Mapledurham Church is near the manor-house, from whose grounds access is obtained to the churchyard by a pair of huge old-fashioned iron gates.
It is a restored church, the south aisle of which is claimed by the Blount family as a private mortuary chapel.

PURLEY

Purley is a small rustic Berkshire village, standing back half a mile from the river.
The church, however, is nearer, and the ancient tower bears a scutcheon with the arms of the Bolingbroke family, and dated 1626.
A horse-ferry below Mapledurham conveys the pedestrian to the Oxford side, where, for less than half a mile, the tow-path continues.
The ferryman is not always to be found, and the pedestrian, stopped by the iron railing, had better follow the footpath skirting the beautiful park at Purley.
Backward glimpses may thus be indulged in of the [Mapledurham] mill, church, and manor-house, with a breadth of fertile meadow intervening; and, walking up the steep road towards Belleisle House, the temporary desertion of the river will be amply repaid by the extensive general view of the Thames Valley which has just been traversed.
Purley Hall, built by South-Sea-Bubble Law, was the residence of Warren Hastings during his trial.
For the boating-man, the river makes no exceptional demand upon his strength or imagination for several miles.

THE ROEBUCK

The divergence by land, as above suggested, brings you presently to the "Roebuck," where a second ferry within the half mile assigns the tow-path once again to the Berkshire shore.
The old-fashioned boating-tavern has not been demolished, but perched upon the hill above the Caversham Reach a more modern hotel tempts the oarsman to pause and refresh, and the holiday-maker to look out upon the remarkable map of river and landscape for which the situation is celebrated.
The thatched roof, ancient kitchen, and tap of the original wayside inn are left standing - an eloquent contrast by the side of its successor.

POPLAR & APPLETREE EYOTS

The Thames between Purley and the eelbucks at Chasey Farm [now Chazey Court Farm, north of St Mary's Island ] is studded with a variety of islands.
They are at their best but small and tiny, bearing a few trees, or a crop of osiers, or amounting to nothing more important than a bed of rushes.
Insignificant, however, though they may be, they preserve the character of the river, breaking as they do the monotony of the current, which, in the more level tract now watered by the Thames, shows an increasing tendency to the commonplace.
The conclusion will be irresistibly forced upon us that we have at length, with reluctance, parted from the beautiful section which includes Streatley and Goring, Pangbourne and Whitchurch, Hardwicke and Mapledurham - scenic pearls of price lying within a convenient range of not more than seven miles.

ST MARY'S ISLAND

Notice-boards upon a willowy eyot, and a fence athwart the stream, forbidding the passage of boats round the considerable backwater to the [right bank], introduce us to a permanent line of eelbucks.

ABOVE CAVERSHAM BRIDGE

Soon the bridge and church of Caversham appear afar; and, dimly, to the right, the chimneys and roofs of Reading.
The Thames is again bordered on the north by hills, a continuation of the range which began at Hart's Wood.
From Mapledurham Lock, however, the river, instead of running parallel with the hills, made a detour, and ran side by side with the railway, until, at the Chasey Farm eelbucks, it turned north again to meet them.
"There is not," wrote Mary Mitford in her "Recollections of a Literary Life",
"such another flower-bank in Oxfordshire as Caversham Warren."
and this reference is to the breadth of country extending from the sedge-lined river to the tree-crowned chalk hills which have terminated their guardianship of the northern banks of the Thames.
From the brow of the hills, upon which modern residences have of late years multiplied exceedingly, there are widespread prospects through which the silver Thames pursues the even tenor of its way, more beautiful from the distant standpoint than, for some miles above Caversham Bridge, it is when near at hand.

CAVERSHAM BRIDGE

The bridge at Caversham is one of the plainest on the Thames, and this suburb of the county town is not in any way remarkable for its romantic adornments.
The bridge was nevertheless of sufficient importance to draw from "Cawsam Hill" (the rustics to this day so pronounce the word Caversham) a furious onslaught from the troops of General Ruven and Prince Rupert, who
"fell upon a loose regiment that lay there to keepe the bridge, and gave them a furious assault both with their ordnance and men - one bullet being taken up by our men which weighed twenty-four pounds at the least."
Sir Samuel Luke's diary, in which this scrap of history is preserved, goes on to state that the "loose regiment" made the hill
"soe hott for them that they were forced to retreat, leaving behind seven bodyes of as personable men as ever were seene."
And, according to Leland, there stood in the time of Henry VIII., at the north end of Caversham Bridge,
"a fair old chapel of stone, on the right hand, piled in the foundation because of the rage of the Thames".
In consequence of the danger in which the meadows stood of floods, in the old pre-drainage days, when the river often played pranks unknown to modern times, the bridge was constructed of stone in its most critical part, but extended partly in wood by a number of arches over the pasturage.

FLOODED MEADOWS, FROM CAVERSHAM BRIDGE

SIMON de MONTFORT ISLAND

Before the days of the Cavaliers, as far back, indeed, as 1163, Caversham Bridge was the scene of a trial by battle, adjudged by His Majesty Henry II.
Henry of Essex, the King's Standard-bearer, had charged Robert de Montford with cowardice and treachery.
At a fight in Wales the Standard-bearer had thrown down his flag and fled, and his plea was that he believed at the time that the king was killed.
The trial by sword is said to have been performed upon one of the islands near the bridge, with almost fatal results to the challenger, for though he recovered from what were at first supposed to be mortal wounds, he was obliged to retire to the abbey, where he exchanged the accoutrements of the soldier for the habit of a monk.

ABOVE CAVERSHAM LOCK

The Thames leaves Reading to the [left bank], but according to some topographers the town derived its name from the Saxon "Rheadyne" ("rhea," a river), or from the British word redin (a fern), the plant, as stated by Leland, growing thereabouts in great plenty.
Hall, however, makes light of these derivations, urging that the name simply meant that Reading was the seat and property of the Rædingas family.
The Thames approaches close to the town below the pretty island, of about four acres in extent, which monopolises more than half the river, midway between Caversham Bridge and Lock; and is to the traveller by rail from London one of the earliest indications - with its line of willows on the farther bank, and the playing-fields intervening on the southern side - that the town is at hand.
The facilities inherited by the inhabitants for bathing, boating, and angling are a boon appreciated to the full, and the Thames materially contributes to the reputation enjoyed by Reading as one of the most desirable country towns of England.
The principal branch of the river below the swimming-baths sweeps to the [right bank], but the navigable channel runs through the lock south of the small island.
The divisions by islets and curvature of the course between the lock and Lower Caversham make the Thames a beautiful feature of the locality.

THE THAMES AT READING, FROM THE OLD CLAPPERS

READING ABBEY

Full of historical memories (it is supposed that the Danes brought their warships up the Thames to the mouth of the Kennet), Reading is proudest, perhaps, of the abbey, of which so many interesting portions are well preserved in connection with the Forbury, the name given to the pleasure-grounds for the people, most creditably maintained by public subscription.
There were four noted abbeys in the south of England - Glastonbury, Abingdon, St.Albans, and Reading, and Reading was not the least important.
The wife of King Edgar founded the establishment as a nunnery, and Henry I. pulled it down to make room for two hundred Benedictine monks.
It was given out that the hand of St. James the Apostle was deposited in the abbey, and the so-called relic "drew" a perennial inflow of support.
Royal bones were laid in the abbey.
Henry himself expressed a wish to be buried within its walls, and his body, accordingly, having been rudely embalmed at Rouen, was wrapped in bull-hides, and conveyed to Reading for ceremonial interment.
At the Dissolution the royal tomb was destroyed and the king's bones ejected, with other débris, to make room for a stable.
But the abbey during its existence was a power in the land.
In it John of Gaunt married his Plantagenet wife, and there the marriage of Henry IV. to Lady Grey was proclaimed.
The abbots of Reading were peers of Parliament, ranking only below their brethren of Glastonbury and St. Albans.
They had the right of coinage; they gave to the abbey much wealth; and amongst the relics was one sent to Cromwell, and described by the commissioner who was sent down to inquire into the revenues as
"the principell relik of idolytrie within thys realme, an aungell with oon wyng that brought to Caversham the spere hedde that percyd our Saviour is syde upon the crosse."
The last abbot of Reading, defying the bulky Defender of the Faith, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, with a couple of monks, within sight of his own abbey gateway.
What of the building was left after the energetic measures of bluff King Hal, was finally razed by Commonwealth victors.
Portions, however, of the ancient chapel and chapterhouse are left, and the old gateway stands, patched up with modern materials, in excellent preservation on the south side of the Forbury.
It is understood that the abbey stones have been worked up into some of the public buildings of the town, and some of them were undoubtedly carted right and left, far and near, for miscellaneous use.
The most interesting fragment is a Norman archway belonging to the abbey mill, and still spanning the mill race known as Holy Brook.

When the Plague raged in London, king, statesmen, and judges, with their courts, removed to Reading.
Later, the royal troops held temporary possession of the town, and, after a ten days' siege by the Roundheads, the garrison displayed a flag of truce.
Charles, and the looting Rupert, operating from Caversham Hill, tried in vain to retrieve the disaster, and when they were driven back, the garrison surrendered.
In the reign of James II. the royal troops and those of the Prince of Orange, had a tussle in Reading market-place, one December Sunday morning, James's men, after a brief engagement, promptly leaving the enemy masters of the position.
Archbishop Laud was a native of Reading; and John Bunyan, as related by Southey, was a frequent visitor to the town: -
"The house in which the Anabaptists met for worship was in a lane then, and from the back door they had a bridge over the River Kennet, whereby, in case of alarm, they might escape.
In a visit to that place Bunyan contracted the disease which brought him to the grave."
Valpy was head-master of Reading Grammar School; and Judge Talfourd was one of the later worthies of the clean, thriving, Berkshire capital.

RIVER KENNET, KENNET & AVON CANAL

The River Kennet, referred to in the previous paragraph, runs through Reading.
The great abbey was built upon it, yet within view of the broader Thames flowing through the level meads northwards.
The Hallowed or Holy Brook, in which the Reading schoolboy of to-day angles for roach and dace, was a timely tributary turned to ecclesiastical uses, and employed to grind corn for the Benedictines, and minister generally to the refectory.
The Kennet is, with the Loddon in the same general portion of the home counties, one of the most considerable tributaries in the great watershed of the Thames.
Drayton, as usual, fastening upon some quality that accurately describes the character of his stream, says: -

At Reading once arrived, clear Kennet overtakes
Her lord, the stately Thames; which that great flood again,
With many signes of joy, doth kindly entertain.
The Loddon next comes in, contributing her store,
As still we see, the much runs ever to the more.

The clear Kennet is, moreover, in other respects an exceedingly interesting river, and a stream, too, of some practical importance.
It rises on the edge of the Wiltshire Downs, and for three or four miles runs in modest volume until it passes through the old town of Marlborough, a steady-going Wiltshire borough, deriving its life not from manufacture, mining, pump-room, or esplanade, but from the land, as represented by the cattle, corn, malt, cheese, and woollen fabrics which are the subjects of barter and exchange at its periodical markets.
In the palmiest days of coaching, four-and-thirty four-horse coaches used to stop at Marlborough on their journey between Bristol and London, the high road at that time running through what is now the centre avenue of the College grounds.
The Vale of Kennet is here bounded by the Wiltshire Downs on the east, and Savernake Forest on the west.
The forest is about a couple of miles from the town, and is the stateliest forest in the kingdom belonging to a private proprietor.
It is sixteen miles in circumference, finely timbered, and possessing that too-often-lacking essential of a forest, harmonious alternation of hill and dale.
There is a glorious avenue of beech-trees five miles long; and in the spring season the hawthorn-trees, of immense age, with heads that often compete in size and shape with the ordinary forest trees, and each standing bravely by itself, are a marvel of fragrant bloom.
Amongst the groves of oak, beech, and chestnut, and undergrowth of bracken, fern, bush, and briar, there are hundreds of fallow deer; and a considerable head of red deer is still successfully maintained.
The Kennet ornaments the Park of Ramsbury Manor, and touches Littlecote Park, a tragic reminiscence of which is given in the notes to Sir Walter Scott's poem of Rokeby.
So far, the Kennet has watered Wiltshire; but soon after leaving Chilton Lodge it enters Berkshire, meandering through a tract of marsh, and, dividing into two streams, runs through the decayed but once considerable town of Hungerford.
Pope signalised the river in the line -

The Kennet, swift, for silver eels renowned;

and the successful attempt recently made by the Flyfishers' Club of Hungerford to introduce grayling into it reminds one of the super-excellent quality of the fish indigenous to its waters.
The Kennet and Avon navigation makes the connection of this portion of Berkshire with the River Thames direct and valuable.
The canal navigation, forming a waterway between the Thames and the West of England, is for the first nineteen miles, namely, from Reading to Newbury, the River Kennet itself; from Newbury to Bath, the canal proper is cut for a distance of fifty-six miles; and the Avon river completes the communication to Bristol.
The numerous locks in the Vale of Kennet are connected with this system of navigation, which is practically associated with the concerns of the Great Western Railway.
Hungerford, the town which has been here noticed as standing upon the Kennet, was described by Evelyn as a "town famous for its troutes," and it has well preserved its reputation.
Amongst the inns of the town is one named after John o' Gaunt, who was a person of note in both Hampshire and Berkshire.
His association with Reading has been already signified in the reference to the burials and funerals which took place in the abbey; and in Hungerford is a horn, highly honoured as a gift of John o' Gaunt to the town, and as a memento of the right of fishing enjoyed by the commoners, who still maintain the custom of fishing the Kennet three days per week.
At Hungerford, in 1688, the negotiations which ended in the substitution of James II. by William of Orange were conducted.
The Vale of Kennet, from the Hungerford meadows to within a few miles of Reading, is a compact stretch of rural loveliness.
We hear of the Vale of Avoca, the Vale of Llangollen, and the Vale of Health, but we do not find the valley through which the Kennet flows magnified in song, though of the smiling and peaceful order of valley landscape it has few competitors in England.
Its green pastures lie by still waters, and its little hills seem to drop fatness.
Between Reading and Marlborough the eye may, right or left, almost at any moment, rest upon limpid and often rippling water.
Narrowed here to the dimensions and restless volume of a goodly lowland trout stream, it there journeys at an even pace, betraying anger and vexation only when subject to artificial restraint; as, for example, when it boils and swirls at a mill-tail, or races impetuously round into the repose of a backwater.
The Kennet and Avon Canal is mixed up rather bewilderingly, to a run-and-read stranger, with the river.
Pleasant brooks and brooklets thread the water-meads, garnished with forget-me-nots and cuckoo-pints; while in the moist hollows the marsh marigold blossoms in golden clusters.
Ancient roofs of thatch-covered tenements, built in another generation, appear now and then; and long-established farmhouses and beautiful mansions vary the prospect on either side of the valley in whose typical English country scenery there is no break of continuity.
At the town of Newbury the Kennet becomes navigable, and so continues throughout the remainder of its course, which is concluded a little below the town of Reading, at the point where the Thames dips to the south as if to meet it, and almost touches the Great Western Railway line.
Newbury is a very old town, as the description in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," of the burning of Palmer, Askew, and Gwyn, in the middle of the sixteenth century, will show.
In the fifteenth century Newbury was famous for its cloth weaving, and "Jack of Newbury," who may almost be said to be the patron saint of the town, was a wealthy cloth manufacturer.
He kept a hundred looms at work, and on the invasion of the country by the Scots marched the entire force into the field, and received much compliment upon their martial bearing and superior garments.
The two battles between Charles I. and his masterful parliamentarians are historical, and the canal near Newbury Lock passes the ground where the Roundheads camped prior to the first battle of Newbury.
In the corn-fields and grass-lands of the rural outskirts of the town, occasional traces are unearthed of a battle in which six thousand men were killed, and a suitable monument, raised by public subscription, stands to commemorate where -

On this field
Did Falkland fall, the blameless and the brave,

and to record that Lord Carnarvon, Lord Sutherland, and other Cavaliers also, perished in the unfortunate cause of their unfortunate king.

SONNING-ON-THAMES.

The Thames from Reading to Sonning calls for no marked comment, and I must confess to a habit, when in these parts, of leaving the waterside at Caversham Bridge and travelling to Sonning along the high road that passes Lower Caversham, by farmhouses, corn-fields, and pastures, and one of the osier farms described on a previous page.
A road at right angles conducts to the "French Horn" Inn, and to the bridges here spanning the Thames.
Arriving at Sonning by river, however, you glide underneath the woods of Holme Park, and so take into calculation the church and village from a point of view highly favourable to their scenic pretensions.
No visitor can do justice to the exquisite beauties of this village without leaving the water and exploring the bridges, islands, and waterways which are so lavishly distributed between the widened banks.
On the "French Horn" shore, the [right bank] branch sweeps round and streams abroad in a skittish shallow under a lightly-built bridge.
At first it is difficult to decide whether this is a backwater or the main stream.
Looking upwards, you notice that another channel yonder follows a row of pollards and orchard-trees on the "White Hart" side.
There are separate streams, apparently, on either side of the bridge; and a shoulder-of-mutton-shaped eyot and other islets create a rapid current in another direction, overhung by a perpendicular bank.
This is topographically confusing, but most agreeable in its endless motion and diversity.
There are two divisions of the bridge; and beyond the first an independent backwater gallops down from the mill, past which, and its chestnut-trees, is the brick county bridge.
The houses of the village, clad with creepers, and often embowered in fruit-trees, and the square tower of the church, as represented in the engraving, constitute one of the most familiar pictures of the Thames.
A charming walk, immediately above and below the lock—locally termed the Thames Parade—extends along the skirts of the woods of Holme Park, the projecting boughs of which o'er-canopy the towing-path, and are reflected in the water.
The eyot is connected with the shores by the lock and weir, duly illustrated on another page from a favourite point of view.
One of the choicest views at Sonning may be obtained by standing on the Parade, say a hundred yards above the lock, and peeping under the boughs of the trees towards Reading, which sometimes looks almost romantic in the dreamy obscurity of an enveloping haze.

SONNING WEIR

Sonning, or Sunning, was not, in all probability, as some maintain, the seat of a bishopric, though it was a standing residence of the Bishops of Salisbury, who had a palace here through successive generations.
Even in Leland's time it was "a fair olde house of stone, even by the Tamise ripe, longying to the Bishop of Saresbyri; and thereby a fair parke."
The church, without which the charming landscape would lose one of its most harmonious features, contains curious monuments, a celebrated peal of bells, and rich carved work.
It is peculiarly rich in memorial brasses, many full-length figures of the Barker family dating from the middle of the sixteenth century.

BELOW SONNING

Very different is the view down the river, when the back of the observer is turned upon the graceful trees drooping into the water, the masses of chestnuts and elms interspersed between the houses, and the divided stream and osier-bedded islets.
The sinuous course is for a couple of miles between low banks; while in the somewhat distant background appear the towering woods, with which we shall become by-and-by more intimately acquainted.
On the lower side of the bridge the river at once collects its scattered forces, and proceeds stately and slow until a chain of islets diversifies the course, and, with the assistance of sundry sharp twists in the left bank, gives increasing strength to the current, and braces itself for the press of business demanded by the mill and lock at Shiplake.

SHIPLAKE VILLAGE

The Rev. Jas. Grainger, author of the "Biographical History of England," was Vicar of Shiplake, and, in his dedication to Horace Walpole, remarks that he had the good fortune to retire early to "independence, obscurity, and content."
The rev. gentleman, who considered Shiplake as synonymous with obscurity, died at the altar of his church while performing divine service, and is buried within its walls; and the tablet which marks his grave refers, as does the dedication, to the obscurity which at Shiplake accompanied the content.
The church stands upon a very charming slope.
The southern face of the tower is mantled over with ivy, and the sacred edifice does not lose in dignity by the near neighbourhood of farm buildings, rickyards, and orchards.
From the porch there is a fine view of the valley of the river.
The church, in which Lord Tennyson was married, was restored in quite recent times, but the stained-glass windows are so ancient that they are supposed to have been originally in the Abbey of St. Bertin at St. Omer.

THE RIVER LODDON

The singular vagaries of the mouth of the Loddon introduce an unexpected variety above Shiplake.
It was this tributary, mentioned after the Kennet by Drayton, in the lines previously quoted, which gave Pope a hint for his fable of Lodona, and he stamps the character of the Loddon in the lin -

The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned.

The Loddon is, nevertheless, scarcely a river on its own merits to inspire a poem, though it is in an especial degree the kind of stream which has attracted the consideration of pastoral poets.
Almost any portion of the country watered by the sluggish Loddon might have yielded just such scenes as Gray describes in his immortal Elegy.
The river rises in the North Hampshire downs, and flows by the site of that Basing house which is famous in the annals of Cromwellian warfare.
Fuller, the church historian, resided in the mansion during the siege, and amidst the confusion of the battle is reported to have composed some portion of his "Worthies of England".
Fragmentary ruins of the house are yet shown.
Every visitor must bear witness to the debt owed by Strathfieldsaye Park to the Loddon, which divides it into two unequal parts.
The quantity and quality of the water gave the late Duke of Wellington an opportunity, of which he perseveringly availed himself, of indulging privately in the pursuit of trout breeding, a project which was abandoned soon after his death.
The Loddon in Berkshire passes by Swallowfield, where in his son's house Lord Clarendon wrote his "History of the Rebellion".
Two centuries earlier than that the manor was the property of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; and it has been in later times of more immediate interest to the admirers of Mary Russell Mitford, as being her home and burial-place.
Her ever-delightful book, "Our Village," is composed of rural word photographs, taken when the lady lived at Three Mile Cross, and all the scenes are faithful pictures of Loddon-side life.
On returning from a recent visit to the Loddon, an old friend of Miss Mitford's, in Reading, gave me, as a memento of the authoress whom we both admired, a note in her handwriting, and after it had been some time in my possession I discovered that the small envelope in which it was enclosed was one which had been previously sent to, and turned by, the industrious old lady.
The operation had been performed with wonderful neatness, and it was only by accident that I discovered inside, and in faded ink, the original address, to "Miss Mitford, Three Mile Cross, Reading, Berks."
Arborfield succeeds Swallowfield, and the river here feeds the picturesque lake in Mr. Walter's park at Bearwood.
The Loddon next touches Hurst, and flows in its lazy way to Twyford, so called from the two fords, which are represented in these days by bridges, crossing the two arms of the river.
After a north-eastern course of some twenty-four miles, the Loddon here runs into the Thames.
It should perhaps be stated, with reference to Pope's fable of Lodona, that it was not connected with the Loddon proper, but with one of the inconsiderable tributaries of a tributary that ripple through part of Windsor Forest.
The poet was, nevertheless, quite accurate in his description of the Loddon as "slow," and "with verdant alders crowned."
It is an altogether different river from the Kennet, which is bright, and abounding in gravelly shallows, after the fashion of the Hampshire chalk streams, and is a famous trout river.
The Loddon, on the contrary, is deep, dark, sluggish, almost troutless, and thickly furnished with the alder, of which it has been writte -

The alder whose fat shadow nourisheth,
Each plant set near to him long flourisheth.

This attribute is only a poetical fancy, but the alder is essentially a tree whose roots are at home when planted by the river, and which is always contributing some evidence of its vigour - in the winter with its catkins hung out to freeze, in the spring with its queer little black cones, and in the summer and autumn by the glossy green leaves which are merciful to the defects of shape in its branches, and which sturdily hold on when the leaves of other trees have been snatched and scattered.

ST PATRICK'S STREAM

The water of the Thames flows into the Loddon through the private backwater known as St. Patrick's Stream, but the Loddon finally joins the Thames below Shiplake Lock, after indirectly opening into it by means of the mouths of St. Patrick's Stream.
There is also, intersecting Burrow Marsh, a backwater, irreverently termed Burrow Ditch, and this joins with St. Patrick's Stream in swelling the volume of the Loddon.
It should perhaps be explained that although under its normal conditions the Thames, through both branches, runs into the Loddon, in times of flood the position is reversed, and the Loddon pours its current into the Thames.

SHIPLAKE LOCK

Shiplake has more than the ordinary share of backwaters and bye-streams, and on this account is a favourite resort of anglers.
Independently of the virtually three outlets by which the waters of the Loddon escape, there are Phillimore Island and Shiplake Mill to be considered.
By following the course of the loop formed by St. Patrick's Stream, the lock may be avoided; but the stream is a very strong one.
Half-way round the bend the comfortable farmhouse of Burrow Marsh will be noticed, and the upper portion of the backwater is generally so choked with rushes as to be almost imperceptible.
The weather-board mill and the weir are prettily set, and the islets abounding above the lock are links in a chain of choice Thames scenery.

SHIPLAKE: A CAMPING OUT PARTY

Near Shiplake Lock, as the illustration to that effect will signify, stands an island which is a favourite camping-out spot for boating-men who do not fear the risk of rheumatism, and who prefer a night on shore under canvas to the cramped and unsatisfactory repose attempted by those who decide to spend the night in their boats.
For miles downwards from this point the Thames winds through scenery in which hill and woodland again take their welcome place.
The views on water and from land may change in degree, but the general character is ever that of quiet beauty.
The commanding situations upon the elevated ground overlooking the valley have long been built upon, and, on brow, slope, or level, mansions of varying styles succeed each other.
Phillimore Island takes its name from the late learned owner of Shiplake House opposite.
It is a dainty little bit of dry land in the midst of the water, covered with willows, poplars, aspens, and one or two chestnuts.
Downstream Wargrave Hill with its imposing white house finishes the view for the time being.

THE GEORGE AND DRAGON

It was at the "George and Dragon" hostelry, at Wargrave, about a quarter of a mile below Shiplake Weir, that Mr. Leslie and Mr. Hodgson, R.A., entered into a temporary partnership in the production of a humorous signboard.

WARGRAVE

Wargrave was once a market-town, but it is now, happily for those who seek its quietude, a mere village far removed from the noise of the world.
Sequestered backwaters between and at the rear of the islands, suggest a change for the visitor who is tired of the shaven lawns, pretty villas, and park-like grounds behind the public ferry and the sleepy village.
The railway runs the other side of the river, crossing it below Shiplake Lock, and so passing by Bolney Court to Henley.
A high road to the latter place runs past the "George and Dragon," and, under the towering woods, are the eyots opposite Bolney Court;

HENNERTON BACKWATER

while on the other side of the space, known as Wargrave Marsh, the Hennerton backwater, or Wargrave Stream, extends for over a mile, and is crossed by two modest foot-bridges.
This backwater is well known for its aquatic offerings, and the artist has appropriately "happened" upon it at a characteristic moment, when a bevy of fair boaters have discovered that the lilies are in flower, and have ventured up to gather the æsthetic blossoms.

[HENNERTON] BACKWATER AT WARGRAVE: A POOL OF WATER-LILIES.

In the secluded village of Ruscombe, between Shiplake and Wargrave, Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, died, and was buried; and the notable objects of the neighbourhood may be concluded by mention of the monument, in Wargrave Church, to the memory of Thomas Day, who wrote "Sandford and Merton," and was thrown from his horse and killed on Bear Hill close by.
The heights, of which there are no lack in the neighbourhood, give many picturesque and wide-spreading views of the river and the surrounding country.

BOLNEY ISLANDS

The islands in the Thames opposite the remarkably plain mansion of Bolney Court are a truly beautiful group, even if they have escaped the popularity accorded to less charming reaches of the river.
Upstream a fine pine wood will be noticed; Hennerton House, to the right, stands on a lofty steep, embowered in trees;

PARK PLACE

and below are the dark woods and white cliffs of Park Place.
Park Place now absorbs all the notice of the downward traveller.
For miles above, the wooded heights have been visible, increasing in beauty as we approached nearer and nearer.
They will now be close on the [left bank], until progress is temporarily checked at Marsh Lock.
The mansion was built originally by one of the Dukes of Hamilton.
The father of George III., when Prince of Wales, lived there; and George IV., before he came to the throne, and the first Earl of Malmesbury, there abode.
The marvellous beauty of the situation, and the splendid success attending the efforts of those owners who understood how to compel Art to assist, by judiciously developing, Nature, have made Park Place what it is.
The principal agent in this latter work was Marshal Conway, who, nevertheless, in many respects, carried his notions of improvement to excess.
Towards the end of the last century much had been done to endow it with the attractions which made it so desirable a residence; but the Marshal, devoting all his time to additional embellishment, ran no little danger of pushing from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The inhabitants of Jersey, to mark their appreciation of his governorship of the island, presented him on his departure with a Druid's Temple or Tomb, which had been found by workmen during his reign on the summit of a hill near St. Heliers.
The relics were brought to Park Place and set up on the summit of one of the lesser eminences.
Forty-five stones, averaging seven feet in height, four in breadth, and from one to three feet in thickness, were arranged in a circle sixty-five feet in circumference, and in the exact positions, so far as could be understood, which they occupied in the dim era of antiquity.
The Marshal built also an artificial Roman amphitheatre, approached by a long underground passage leading to a valley planted with cypress; constructed a bridge from materials carted over from the remains of Reading Abbey; overhung a walk, at the end of which was a marble tomb, with weeping willows; and elsewhere excavated a cavern, and left other tokens of his eccentric restlessness.
The mansion was rebuilt by its present owner, Mr. Noble, in the French-Italian style; but its principal merit is the incomparable situation (300 feet above the level of the Thames), and surroundings of nine hundred acres of superbly wooded hill and dale, velvet lawns and romantic glades, mossy dells and tangled thickets.
The domain is entered by seven lodges, and east of the house a cedar is pointed out as having been planted by George III.

PARK PLACE BOATHOUSE

The latest considerable, and not least sensible, addition to Park Place is the Gothic boat-house, at which visitors, who have the privilege of roaming over the grounds, are permitted to land.
The really handsome exterior is not belied by the artistic furnishment within, comprising pictures, carvings, and statues.
The walk through the grounds, with its surprises of mimic ruins and suggestive emblems, its sylvan glories which owe nothing to the hand of man, and the fairy-like glimpses which owe everything to the bountiful river, is a treat, indeed, of which one never tires, and which every sojourner in these parts should, in duty bound, make his own.
From the bosom of the river the white gleams of chalky cliff contrast admirably with the masses of foliage.
The residence at Park Place shows well from the second or third meadow below Marsh Lock; but the fields on the Henley side are being converted into brick-yards, and the first view of the town is marred by the coal-sheds, sidings, and ugly little railway station, to which the adjacent block of terrace-buildings cannot be accepted as in any degree a set-off.

MARSH LOCK

The fine old weir which, until recent years, furnished an everlasting object-lesson to young artists at Marsh Lock, has been superseded by a modern arrangement erected near the paper-mill, and worked by a travelling pulley; but on the right bank the brick-mill, house, and exquisitely kept river frontage of its gardens, improve by time, and worthily complete the charms of Park Place; and, zig-zagging across the broad Thames, there remains the wooden bridge by which the barge-horses cross from Oxfordshire to the farther shore and back again without touching land.

FISHING

Underneath the high staging [at Marsh Lock], the river, in alternate pools and shallows, reveals a pebbly bottom more resembling the bed of a mountain-born salmon river than the placid Thames.
In the rapid and moderately deep water running from the paper-mill, the patient observer, waiting on a sunny day until the fish have recovered from the alarm communicated by the shadow cast as he took his position, will have favourable opportunity of observing the kind of creatures which inhabit the waters.
In the spring months, when the barbel are congregated on domestic cares intent, the almost incredible piscatorial resources of the Thames can be easily understood, and this particular run of water at times appears to be crowded with this sport-giving species.
The district of which Henley is in a sense the riparian metropolis is one of the best along the entire length of the river for the angler, in whose interests we may agree, perhaps, to break off our downward voyage for the moment, in order to complete the information proffered in brief in the first chapter, with respect to the piscatorial capabilities of the river.
Although the right of the public to fish in the Thames has been frequently called in question, and threatened with opposition, it remains one of the principal rivers in England free to the general angler.
Probably forty or fifty years ago men fished from any section of the tow-path, or with their boats moored in any pool, without let or hindrance.
Within the last quarter of a century, however, and especially within the last fifteen years, anglers have increased probably a thousandfold.
A distinct angling literature has been established.
The clubs and fishing societies of London alone may be numbered by hundreds, and the increased facilities of locomotion all over the country combine, with other progressive changes, to promote a spirit of sport, and develop the sporting instincts of the people in this innocent direction.
One of the results of the multiplication of the angling fraternity, and the consequent hard fishing to which the River Thames has been put, was seen in the evidence given before the Special Committee of the House of Commons during the session of 1883.
Prominent amongst the grievances complained of by witnesses who appeared for the general public, was the assertion that waters which had been free to anglers, all and sundry, from time immemorial, were now claimed as private fisheries by riparian owners; and the report of the Committee, as many readers will remember, though it was only an expression of opinion, was rather against than for the anglers.
In many of the most important districts of the Thames local Preservation Societies have been established, vested with some sort of control over the fishing, and enforcing, by their bailiffs and keepers, those by-laws of the Thames Conservancy which were framed after consultation with gentlemen representing the different classes of metropolitan anglers.
It is only, therefore, in rare instances, that permission to fish is refused to the public, and the system of preservation is acquiesced in by all earnest sportsmen, who do not need to be informed that unless the pastime of angling is conducted on strictly fair principles, the Thames, or any other river, would soon be depopulated of its fish.

For angling purposes the River Thames may be roughly divided into three sections.
The first comprises the tidal waters, in which the fishing is principally confined to roach, dace, barbel, and an occasional trout in Teddington Weir.
Of the coarser fish, incredible quantities have been caught since the regular supervision of the river was undertaken by the local Piscatorial Society of Richmond.
The next division is from Teddington Weir to Staines, where the city waters end, and over this the Thames Angling Preservation Society, the most important of its kind in the country, holds sway.
The last section comprises all the water between Staines and Oxford, and as I have already intimated, of this Henley is the principal station, or head-quarters.
The trout-fishing of the Thames is probably not what it was in the palmy days when salmon were caught in the river, but it is still surprisingly good, considering the very much-restricted haunts of the fish.
It is supposed by many persons who have only a passing acquaintance with Thames trout that it is a distinct species.
The fish, it is true, is in external non-essentials different from most of its family, and has, through a long course of residence in the Thames, established certain characteristics of its own.
A typical Thames trout, with its deep thick body, shapely head, silvery sides, and fine spots, is an extremely handsome fish, and second to none in its sport-yielding qualities when fighting for its life in a tumbling bay.
The difficulty is to catch it.
Trout-fishing in the Thames commences on the 1st of April, and terminates in the middle of September; and is chiefly confined to the weir pools.
Here, in the foaming and churning water, all the predatory instincts of the species find ample opportunities of practice amongst the delicate bleak and other small fry which love the rapid turbulent streams.
Whatever the Thames trout might have been in olden times, it is not to be denied that his representative in these days has no partiality for insect food, of which, however, such a river does not yield an abundance; hence few anglers attempt that most sportsmanlike method of angling for trout - the artificial fly.
Failing this, the most fashionable mode is that of spinning with a bleak or small dace, and latterly this has been supplemented by the less commendable practice of live baiting.
In many of the upper waters, as at Henley and Reading, salmo fario of the ordinary kind have been artificially hatched and turned into the river.
Loch Leven trout have also been introduced, and one of the latest efforts at acclimatisation has been with Great Lake trout and land-locked salmon, sent to this country by the United States Fish Commission, and introduced to the Thames through the National Fish Culture Association and Thames Angling Preservation Society.
Whether these interesting experiments in pisciculture will be attended with success time only will prove, but there can be no question that the number of common trout in the Thames have, of late, largely increased, though a greater proportion of small fish have, as might be supposed, been taken.

The principal sport of the Thames, however, must be looked for in what are called the coarse or summer spawning fish, for whose advantage a close time has been instituted between the 15th of March and the 15th of June.
The latter date is full early for many of the species.
At the same time, the periods at which the fish get into condition after spawning depend so much upon the varying circumstances of the water that the angling public have been, reasonably enough, allowed to enjoy the benefit of any doubt that might have been entertained.
The increasing number of steam-launches has in many ways interfered with the pursuit of angling, and the disciples of Izaac Walton entertain anything but a friendly feeling towards the frequenters of the Thames who take their pleasure in other ways than through fishing-rod or punt.
The Thames fish have, indeed, many enemies to contend with, and angling in its waters with success becomes a more and more uncertain and difficult art every year.
The fish that has deteriorated, most probably, from the introduction of the steam-launch is the pike.
The Thames is not, naturally, except in a comparatively few reaches, and at the weirs and mill-pools, a trout stream; but it is precisely the water in which the voracious pike should flourish.
The beds of reeds and rushes, the eyots, the deep holes under willow-lined banks, the long straight reaches down which the currents, "strong without rage", maintain their easy progress - these are the natural haunts of Esox lucius.
But pike-fishing has suffered greatly on account of the pernicious and Cockney system of trailing from the stems of pleasure-boats and steam-launches.
By the murderous flights of hooks, dragged in their wake, without any exercise of skill or attention on the part of the owners of the apparatus, infant fish, too often under the legal minimum of length, are taken.
Any pike-fisher who is wise will, therefore, avoid the watery highways which are swept and harried by this legion of pot-hunters.
In the particular district, however, at which we are pausing to indulge in these piscatorial reflections, the troller or live-baiter may find his most liberal opportunities.
No steam-launch can push its way up the overshadowed and tranquil backwaters of Hennerton, or round about the islands at Bolney.
The skilful pike-fisherman will not only seek such undisturbed retreats as these, but will obtain his best sport by deftly dropping his paternoster fitted with one gimp hook upon a gut trace, and baited with gudgeon or small dace, between banks of weeds, and in those odd and beautiful clearings in the aquatic forests which the practised eye may always find.
The Thames, nevertheless, as a pike river, has for some years been a disappointment, and will so continue to be until trailing is prohibited by law.
After the month of October the pike angler has a fairer chance of sport.
Simultaneously with the disappearance of the steam-launches and pleasure-boats, from which angling is conducted as a passing amusement, and in utter ignorance of the science, or even rudiments of the art, the decay of the weeds begins.
This is the signal for a general exodus from summer quarters by the fish.
They sheer off into deep water.
The pike, no longer concealed in a thicket of subaqueous vegetation, from which he has, during the summer months, pounced like an insatiable ogre upon the silvery wanderers swimming heedlessly about in search of minute freshwater crustacea and larvæ, takes to the life of a roamer, free from much of the harassing which kept him close, out of the range of roistering Thames excursionists.
But it is unfortunate for the pike that the keen sportsman also benefits by this change.
The dying down of the weeds leaves him space for the exercise of his skill at the precise time when his game may be taken at disadvantage.
Pike-fishing is, therefore, the winter recreation of the angler in the Thames, though, for the reasons indicated, large specimens are rarely killed now.

The perch, most cosmopolitan of fishes in the rural districts of England, the bold biter idolised by schoolboys, whose easy prey under favourable conditions he is certain to be, has almost disappeared from some portions of the Thames.
Henley used to be a grand perch preserve, and the late Mr. Greville Fennell, whose angling contributions to literature were chiefly founded upon his observations and experiences in the reaches between Henley and Pangbourne, gave it at one time a first place on the list of good perch waters.
But cosmopolitan as the perch may be in its character, habits, and haunts, it is more difficult to rear than many other of the summer spawners, and the peculiar manner in which it hangs its eggs in festoons around the roots and branches beneath water, renders it an easy victim to the rough usages of swiftly-passing traffic.
Shiplake hole, and the "tails" (as the fishermen term them) of all the islands mentioned in this chapter, are still favourite places for perch during the winter time, when the steam-launches are in dry dock, though the quality and quantity of the well-beloved zebra of the fresh water have unfortunately declined in the Thames.
> The carp family thrive, as ever they did, and in some years are caught in unusually large numbers, rejoicing the hearts of the professional fishermen who have languished for want of customers through a series of depressing fishing seasons.
The head of the family is very rarely taken in the Thames proper.
Some carp, however, are found in the Cherwell, and by accident, at very rare intervals, solitary specimens are caught in the Thames itself.
But these are the accidental wanderers; exceptions proving the rule.
Bream are more plentiful, but the most prolific of all are chub, roach, dace, and gudgeon.
The popularity to which the Canadian canoe has risen on the Thames is not a little due to the adaptability of the light and elegant boat for chub-fishing.
Regulating the drifting of the canoe with one hand, the operator, armed with a suitably short and supple fly-rod, drops down some fifteen yards distant from the overhanging willow-bushes, from under whose branches, close to the loamy or gravelly bank, a lightly-dropped fly of large dimensions will, in the calm of a July or August eventide, seduce the great bronze-coloured "chevin" to its fate, while, in the winter time, artful concoctions of cheese-paste, and other gross baits, directed down stream by a long Nottingham line and the familiar float tackle, will be equally efficacious in the formation of a bag.

Roach and dace-fishing, the simplest of angling practices, as conducted from the comfortable floor and chair of a Thames punt, continues to be, as of yore, the most familiar form of the contemplative man's recreation for the average citizen.
In the mysteries of fly-fishing, and the ingenious devices invented for betraying the fishes that follow spinning-baits of all descriptions, improvements real and so-called are continually announced, but no change seems to have been suggested for many years in the ancient methods adopted on the Royal River for the capture of barbel by ledgering, and roach and dace by ground-baiting, plumbing, and Thames punt-tackle.
Angling in the Thames is a source of untold delight and innocent enjoyment for tens of thousands of persons every year, and long may the day be postponed when the modest privileges of the London anglers, whose opportunities are limited, and whose ambition in the matter of sport is easily satisfied, are reduced or interfered with.

BELOW MARSH LOCK

The deeper pool across the river, near the flour-mill at Marsh Lock, used to be a favourite resort of those anglers who pursued their sport from a boat; and the bank from the paper-mill towards Henley witnesses many an exercise of patience from the youthful Waltonian.
The utilitarian spirit which has rendered necessary the hideous iron weir above the mill, and which is step by step destroying so many of the gems of Thames scenery, has, however, built a black barricade from the miller's boat-house to the head of the eyot, completely cutting off the communication by water with the further bank.
The stream below is narrowed by the two islands in the middle of the channel, and rendered busy by that constant traffic of pleasure-boats which is inevitable in proximity to such towns as Henley and Reading.
During the last quarter of a mile the familiar buildings and substantial bridge of Henley have opened to view, and we conclude the voyage to this stage amidst the bustle of boats and boatmen, and a parting glance at the head of Isis as chiselled by the Hon. Mrs. Damer.
Water-plants are entwined around the face, which aptly looks in the direction of the river's source.

WILLIAM SENIOR.

CHAPTER 5, HENLEY to MAIDENHEAD
by the Rev. PROFESSOR BONNEY, F.R.S.

Map: Henley to Maidenhead, Engraving: Henley from the tow-path, Henley Church, Henley Houses, Henley Bridge, Engraving: Red Lion Henley, Photo: Henley Regatta, Engraving: Regatta (Temple] Island, Boatrace 1829, Around Henley, Engraving: Fawley Court, Remenham, Greenlands, Hambleden Lock, Engraving: Aston Ferry, Aston Ferry, Culham Court, Engraving: Medmenham Abbey, Medmenham Abbey, Engraving: below Medmenham, below Medmenham, Hurley Lock, Temple Lock, Engraving: Bisham Abbey, Bisham Abbey, Engraving: Bisham Church, Bisham Church, Marlow, Engraving: Marlow from Quarry Woods, Who ate the puppy pie?, Engraving: Quarry Woods picnic, Quarry Woods, Bourne End, Engraving: Swans, Swans, Abney House, Distant View of Cliveden Woods, Cookham, Cookham Channels, Cookham Ferry Inn, Cookham delights, Engraving: Cookham, Cookham Church, Hedsor Park, Cookham Lock Cut, Engraving: Cookham Lock, Cookham Lock, Cliveden Deep, Cliveden House, Formosa Island, Bavins gulls islands (Slow Grove, Picnic), Engraving: Boulters Lock, Raymead, Landing stage, Boulters Lock, Taplow Court, Engraving: Taplow Woods, Maidenhead Bridge, Maidenhead Railway Bridge

HENLEY TO MAIDENHEAD

Notwithstanding the old proverb concerning comparisons, we may venture to assert of this section of the Thames that it is the richest in natural beauties.
Though there are spots on the upper part of the river which individually can hold their own with any, there will nowhere be found such a succession of exquisite views of noble reaches of water, of wooded bluffs and slopes, of green meadows and tree-covered islands, of old villages and stately or ancient mansions.
There is, of course, nothing between Henley and Maidenhead which can rival the grand grouping of Windsor Castle on its wooded eminence, or the formal magnificence of Hampton Court; neither can the gardens of Kew, or the park on Richmond Hill, be equalled by anything on this part of the Thames; still, it affords us such a series of beautiful views of meadows, woods, and buildings that only between Richmond and Kew can we be induced to hesitate in awarding the palm to the portion of the river which is the subject of this chapter.

HENLEY-ON-THAMES

HENLEY FROM THE TOW-PATH

At Henley-on-Thames we are on the border of Oxfordshire.
From its bridge we obtain not the least striking of the views to which we have alluded.
The wider expanse of the upper valley contracts a little as the stream approaches the base of Remenham Hill, whose wooded slopes descend to the neighbourhood of the water.
The Thames is deflected slightly towards the left as it commences the curve, in which, a mile or so farther down, it sweeps round the base of the long shelving spur which forms the northern termination of Remenham.
On the Oxfordshire side the ground rises more gradually, but perceptibly, from the river bank.
Just where the valley is narrowest is the site of Henley.
A little farther down the hills recede on this side, and a fertile strath intervenes between their base and the water's edge.
Henley is an old town - indeed, Plot claims for it the distinction of being the oldest town in Oxfordshire - but it makes little figure in history.
A conflict between the royal and the parliamentary troops in the "Great Rebellion" is almost the only stirring incident which it has witnessed.
Moreover, it has retained fewer relics of ancient days than many places of more modern date.

HENLEY CHURCH

Even its church, which is well situated in the neighbourhood of the river, is not a building of unusual antiquity.
The greater part of the fabric is in the Perpendicular style.
The tower is even younger, and is said to have been erected by Cardinal Wolsey, so that it belongs to the latest period of Tudor work.
Several of the windows have been filled with modern stained-glass, and the interior has been carefully restored, so that the church is not unworthy of its position.
Some of the monuments have a certain interest, though no great historical personages have found a grave here.
One commemorates Richard Jennings, "Master Builder of St. Paul's Cathedral"; another, Jack Ogle, an almost forgotten humorist of the days of the Restoration; a third, the widow of Sir Godfrey Kneller; and a fourth, General Dumouriez, who ended an eventful life at Turville Park, in this neighbourhood.
He was one of those unlucky men who have the misfortune to be too rational for the age in which they were born.
A distinguished soldier even in his youth - for by the time he was four-and-twenty he had been wounded almost as many times - he fell under Court displeasure for his liberal opinions.
These the Bastille did not eradicate, so that he afterwards became a member of the Jacobin Club.
But though he had striven and suffered for freedom, though he had headed the troops of the Directory in a successful campaign in Belgium, he was too moderate in his views to satisfy the fanatics of the Revolution, and, to save his own life, was obliged to put himself into the hands of the Austrians.
At last he came to England, where he lived for nearly twenty years the unobtrusive life of a man of letters.

HENLEY HOUSES

Though Henley has not retained any of the picturesque mansions of olden time, there are several houses, dating from various parts of the last century, which will repay rather more than a passing glance; and the town, as seen from the river bridge, is not without a certain beauty.
While these Hanoverian mansions do not afford us the charm of the varied outline and picturesque grouping - the light and shadow - of mediæval buildings, there is a certain stateliness in their strong-built walls and formal rows of windows; and the rich red of their brick façades, especially when relieved by the green tendrils or the bright flowers of climbing plants, is not without its attractions from its warmth of colour.
Of these mansions - for they are almost worthy of the name - Henley contains some good examples; and some bow-windowed houses, perhaps of slightly earlier date, are in pleasant contrast with their stiffer outlines, and give variety to the domestic architecture.
The Berkshire side of the river also is not without its contingent of attractive residences.
On the higher ground are two or three handsome mansions; at the bottom of the slope are many pretty villas - all modern.

HENLEY BRIDGE

The bridge itself, a five-arched stone structure, is by no means the least adornment of the town.
It, too, is a work of the last century, being built about the year 1787, from the design of Mr. Hayward, a Shropshire architect.
He died during the progress of the work, and greatly desired, it is said, to be buried beneath the centre arch of the bridge.
This singular place of sepulture - almost rivalling that of Alaric - was out of harmony with the spirit of the age, so, as the next best thing, they buried him in the neighbouring churchyard, and set up a fine monument to his memory.

THE RED LION, HENLEY

Close by the bridge is the "Red Lion" Inn, a hostel of note now, as it has been for long years past; for on a pane in one of its windows Shenstone wrote the well-known lines. -

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think that he has found
His warmest welcome at an inn.

A sentiment which, though perhaps not very complimentary to English hospitality - or indeed to any hospitality, as the author obviously does not limit himself to our own island - has been endorsed, as Boswell tells us, by Dr. Johnson, who also, in his time, made trial of the "Red Lion".
At any rate, Shenstone would have written more guardedly if he had been welcomed by the clerk at the counter of one of the great American hotels.
An interview between one of these gentry and Dr. Johnson would make a good subject for an "imaginary conversation", except, perhaps, that it would be too brief.

HENLEY REGATTA

HENLEY REGATTA. (From an Instantaneous Photograph.)

Henley is generally a quiet enough town, though the increasing fondness for river-side amusements gives to it a certain briskness through all the summer-time; but it has one epoch of thrilling excitement, one brief period of dense crowd and ceaseless bustle, in the early part of July, at the time of its regatta.
If the Universities' race between Putney and Mortlake is the aquatic Derby, Henley races are the Goodwood meeting of the Thames.
The inns, the lodgings, the private houses, are full of visitors; house-boats are moored on the river, tents pitched in the meadows for those who enjoy the delights of camping out, excursion trains disgorge their thousands, boats of every description bring their contingents from various localities up and down stream.
The "Fair mile," the famed approach to the town on the Oxford road - the special pride of Henley - has no rest from the stream of passing vehicles, and its trees are powdered with their dust; the streets, the meadows, the bridge, every "coign of vantage", are crowded; the usual itinerant accompaniments of an outdoor festivity are there in abundance, and the whole place is noisy with passing vehicles, shouting throngs, vendors of "c'rect cards," and other wares.
The course is rather less than a mile and a half in length, from an "ait" below Fawley Court, which bears the name of Regatta Island, to the bridge.

REGATTA ISLAND [TEMPLE ISLAND]

So the town itself becomes the theatre in which the interest of the aquatic drama is concentrated.
The banks may be said to blossom with artificial colours, for as it is summer-time the "bright day brings forth", not the serpent, but the daughters of Eve in their smartest dresses and their most brilliant of parasols.
Beauty and fashion are there, for a day or two at Henley make a pleasant change in the London season, when its gaieties begin to pall a little, and the streets of the metropolis are at a July temperature.
Here may be seen subtler harmonies and the delicate blendings of tints that indicate the handiwork of some mistress of the art of dress; there the more glaring colours and gaudier contrasts that mark the efforts of the shorter purse and inferior taste; but even to these distance lends enchantment, and all unite to form a variegated border to the river and make a flower-bed of the meadows.
The men, too, don brighter colours than is their wont, for boating uniforms are in the ascendant.
The river is alive with craft of all kinds - skiffs and dingies, tubs and boats of every degree - and the officials find it no easy task to clear the course for each race.
The interest is not, as at Putney, concentrated on a single contest; the "events" are many, the chief, perhaps, being the Ladies' Plate, the Grand Challenge Cup, and the Diamond Sculls.
These also are not settled in a single race; usually there are two or three heats, in order to reduce the number of competitors, before the final struggle.
The interest of the Henley contests also affects a wider circle than the inter-University race.
The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, which have taken the lead on the Isis or the Cam in the annual races, send their representative "eights" or "fours", the best oarsmen of the London clubs put in an appearance, and one or two of our public schools now commonly send a boat, and not seldom carry off a trophy from Henley.
Thus these races have a special interest for fathers and mothers, for "sisters, cousins, and aunts"; and a visit to Henley is not without its attraction for those by whom the good things of this life are held in esteem, for luncheons and various comforts for the inner man - and woman - are by no means forgotten.

THE FIRST BOATRACE 1829

We may recall to mind in passing that the course at Henley was the scene of the first aquatic contest between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
It took place at the beginning of the long vacation, on the 10th of June, 1829, late in the afternoon.
Contrary to expectation Oxford was victorious.
The race of course was rowed in the old-fashioned heavy boats, without outriggers, which were then termed
"very handsome, and wrought in a superior style of workmanship....
The Oxford crew appeared in their blue-check dress,
the Cambridge in white with pink waistbands.
Some members of the crews on both sides afterwards became men of mark; four of them have risen to high positions in the Church.
In the Oxford boat rowed W. R. Fremantle, now Dean of Ripon, and Christopher Wordsworth, the venerable Bishop of St.Andrews.
In the Cambridge boat rowed Merivale, the historian of Rome, who is now Dean of Ely, and George Augustus Selwyn, the first missionary bishop of New Zealand, who after years of arduous labour in that distant field of Christian enterprise was transferred to the bishopric of Lichfield.
There he laboured earnestly at work not less in amount, and more exhausting in nature, than that of the colonial mission-field, till he was called away to his rest."

AROUND HENLEY

On the Berkshire side of the bridge at Henley a road climbs the steep slope, which may well be followed by any who desire to obtain a wider view of the neighbourhood - stately trees, grassy slopes, now and again a villa with its garden, brighten the nearer distance; below lie the valley and the town.
In one place the bank by the road-side is steep and broken, the red soil contrasting pleasantly with the rich green of the foliage.
There is a walk also at the base of the hill, which should not be forgotten, where the path leads along a level strip of meadow, dappled in the spring season with innumerable flowers, to the little church of Remenham, with its remnants of Norman work, its exceptionally pretty lych-gate, and its carved porch.
Its situation, with the river on one side and the wooded slopes on the other, is not the least picturesque in the Valley of the Thames.

FAWLEY COURT

FAWLEY COURT.

On the meadows below Henley, and on the left bank of the Thames, is Fawley Court, a mansion built by Sir Christopher Wren, but subsequently enlarged.
The grounds extend from road to river, and their fine aged trees enhance greatly the beauty of this reach of the Thames.
The present house occupies the site of an old manor-house, which was plundered by the Royalist troops at the outbreak of the Civil War.
The owner, Bulstrode Whitelock, has left on record a pitiful account of the wanton ravages committed by the troopers.
They consumed, or wasted, a great store of corn and hay; they tore up or burnt his books and papers, many of them of great value; they broke up his trunks and chests, stole whatever they could transport of his household goods, and destroyed the rest; they carried off his horses and his hounds, killed or let loose his deer, and broke down his park palings -
"in a word, they did all the mischief and spoil that malice and enmity could provoke barbarian mercenaries to commit".
We have heard often of the devastation wrought by the Roundheads; it is well to remember that the Cavaliers were by no means guiltless.

REMENHAM

Remenham village, with its little church, already mentioned, nestles below the slope opposite to Fawley Court,

GREENLANDS

and lower down, on the Buckinghamshire side (for we have now crossed the county boundary), comes Greenland House [ now "Greenlands" ], opposite to where the Thames makes its sharpest bend.
This fared even worse in those unquiet times.
About two years later than the incident just related it stood a siege of six months, when it was held by the Royalists against their opponents, and did not capitulate till it was almost knocked to pieces.
Some traces of the works raised during the siege still remain, and when the house was enlarged, about a quarter of a century since, quite a crop of cannon-balls was dug up.

HAMBLEDEN LOCK

Sweeping round the eastern side of the Berkshire slopes the Thames is checked by Hambledon Lock and its islands - well known to fishermen, the reach above being noted for pike -

ASTON FERRY

ASTON FERRY.

by Aston Ferry, where the river begins to strike out into the more open part of the valley,

CULHAM COURT

by Culham Court and the islands below,

MEDMENHAM ABBEY

MEDMENHAM ABBEY

till it approaches a place well known to the pleasure-seekers of the present day as a sort of half-way house between Henley and Marlow, and as the fittest site for a picnic.
Pleasantly situated on the level meadows in the valley on the Berkshire side, and backed by the wooded uplands which are now some little distance from the river, is Medmenham Abbey, a place of more note since its suppression than in earlier times.
The convent was founded not long after the Norman Conquest, when the owner of the manor bestowed it on the Abbey of Woburn, in Buckinghamshire, which he had recently founded, for the endowment of a separate but subsidiary house.
Medmenham does not appear ever to have become wealthy, and never made any figure in history, except that the abbot was epistolar of the Order of the Garter, a distinction which one would not have anticipated for a place so humble.
The report of the Commissioners at the time of the suppression of the monasteries is curiously negative.
It had at that time only two monks,
"Servants none - Wood none - Debts none - Bells, &c., worth £2 - 1s - 8d.
The house wholly in ruins, and the value of the moveable goods only £1 - 3s - 8d."
A poor piece of plunder, certainly.
As this statement would lead us to suppose, not much of the original conventual buildings now remain.

Even of those parts which bear an ancient aspect, some are only imitations of the last century, when Medmenham enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity.
At that time the abbey, which after the suppression of the monasteries had been converted into a dwelling-house, was the property of Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer.
He determined to found a society, which was called after his first name - the Franciscan Order.
It was, however, anything but an Order of Poverty.
The number was twelve, in imitation of a band to which these men were the most opposite possible, for the old Latin lines -
"Exue Franciscum tunicâ laceroque cucullo Qui Franciscus erat, jam tibi Christus erit"
[ I think more or less: "Strip St Francis of his clothes - and what you will have is Christ" ]
- are the very last one would think of applying to this Order of Debauchery.
Great mystery was observed; the workmen who prepared the building were brought down from London, secluded as far as possible from any communication with the people of the neighbourhood, and then conveyed back as mysteriously as they had come.
Very few servants were kept in the "abbey", and these were not allowed to wander beyond the monastic precincts, or to hold any intercourse with the neighbouring villagers.
Still, though there were no penny papers or "own correspondents" in those days, though "interviewers" and "special commissioners" had not been invented, some rumours got abroad as to the sayings and doings of the new fraternity.
It is to be hoped that they were exaggerated, that the author of "Chrysal" has over-coloured the picture; but that these Franciscans carried out to the full the Rabelaisian motto,
"Fay ce que voudras," [ Do what you want ] inscribed over their portal, there can be little doubt.
Their rites and ceremonies appear to have been profane parodies of those of their predecessors, their lives in keeping with their religion.
Among the band were numbered the Earl of Sandwich, Bubb Dodington, Wilkes, and Churchill.
Society seems to have been rather scandalised, but we do not read that the Franciscans suffered any social penalty.
Happily, after a time the Order was dissolved, under what circumstances it is not exactly known.
One version, perhaps legendary, is that a disappointed member secreted a large monkey in a chest in the hall prior to one of their great festivals.
At a particular stage of the ceremonies there was an invocation to the Evil One.
At this moment the treacherous monk pulled a string and lifted the lid; Pug sprang upon the table, and then leaped through the open window.
The revellers, mistaking their kinsman for their master, thought matters were getting serious, and so held no more merry meetings.

The house is at present a pleasantly situated inn, with farm buildings attached; ivy mantles picturesquely some of the old walls, and the tower, an "antique" of the last century, looks well when not too closely examined.
Fine aged trees add greatly to the beauty of the place.
The village lies back from the river at the foot of the bluffs, and is reached by a lane, bordered by some of the old-fashioned free-growing hedges which, though not much favoured by modern farmers, are such a delight to the wayfarer.
Of the many sequestered spots in the Valley of the Thames, Medmenham village is by no means the least attractive.
A wooded slope rises steeply at its back, the little church is half buried among trees, its cottage gardens are bright with flowers, and more than one of the buildings is ancient and picturesque.
A farmhouse on the upland above is said to be the successor of one which occupied the site some eight centuries since, and there is an old-world air about the whole place, as though generation after generation of its simple inhabitants had lived and died, apart from the turmoil of the outer world; hearing of stirring events, of battles, of changes of government, even of the dethronement of kings, and of civil strife, as of things which altered but little the even tenor of their lives, and only came home to them when, like bad seasons, they raised prices or lowered wages.
In such places generation follows generation with little note of change.
The son grows up to manhood, and lives as his father did before him; takes his place on the farm when the old man retires, first to his easy-chair by the fireside in winter, and at the cottage door in summer, and then to his long resting-place in the churchyard; the young man, in his turn, becomes the father of sturdy boys, begins to stoop a little, and to show the signs of advancing years, till at last he too sinks down into the "lean and slippered pantaloon", and then follows his forefathers to the silent land.
These quiet days now seem nearly ended for our country - machinery, steam, electricity, have so quickened the pulse in all the great centres of national life that there is a responsive thrilling of the nerves even in the most remote extremities.
The old order has changed, yielding place to new.
We have gained much, but we have lost something, and can appreciate, from their increasing rarity, the calm of these little nooks and corners of England, where the scream of the steam-whistle, or the bellow of the "siren", does not scarify the ears; where the voice of the costermonger is not heard in the land, and no excursion train disgorges a crowd of noisy revellers; where factory chimneys do not blacken the air, nor heaps of chemical refuse disseminate their fetid odours.

BELOW MEDMENHAM

Below Medmenham some more islands vary the course of the Thames, and on the high ground upon the left bank is Danesfield.
Woods surround the house and clothe the slope.
Here flourish holly, box, and yew - trees, it is believed, of indigenous growth; descendants, very probably, of those which covered all the uplands, when men were few in England, and many a mile of unbroken forest separated the scattered settlements.
A curious relic is said to be preserved in the house - a withered human hand, which was discovered among the ruins of Reading Abbey.
This is believed to be identical with the supposed hand of St. James the Apostle, presented to that establishment by Henry I.

HURLEY

Hurley comes next, with its islands and locks, interrupting the even tenor of the river, with Harleyford House, backed by sloping woods, on the opposite shore.
Hurley is another old-world place, for it too carries back its history to the days of the Conqueror, when a convent was founded here.
A former writer on the Thames makes this a text for some sarcastic remarks: -
"The fascinating scenery of this neighbourhood has peculiarly attracted the notice of the clergy of former periods, who, in spite of the thorny and crooked ways which they have asserted to be the surest road to heaven, have been careful to select some flowery paths for their own private journeyings thither; among which ranks Hurley, or Lady Place, formerly a monastery."
This was founded by Geoffry de Mandeville, a comrade of William the Norman on the field of Hastings, to whom fell a share of the plunder of England.
Parts of the church belong to that which he erected, and within its walls Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, was buried.
A group of farm buildings still incorporates portions of the ancient monastery, the chief one being the refectory.
But the house called Lady Place, which once occupied another part, has a more important position in history than ever belonged to the Benedictine convent, which, perhaps, was somewhat thrown into the shade by its annexation to the great Abbey of Westminster.
After the Dissolution the site of the monastery of Hurley was purchased from the family to which it had first been granted by Richard Lovelace, who had been a companion of Drake on one of his expeditions.
He built a fine house "out of the spoils of Spanish galleons from the Indies", and this, in the year 1688, was the property of his descendant Richard, Lord Lovelace.
"Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterranean vault, in which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been found.
In this dark chamber some zealous and daring opponents of the Government held many midnight conferences during that anxious time when England was impatiently expecting the Protestant wind." [Macaulay]
In acknowledgment of this the house was afterwards visited by William III.
The Lovelace title became extinct in the year 1736, and Lady Place passed into other hands.
The purchaser was
"Mrs. Williams, sister to Dr. Wilcox, who was Bishop of Rochester about the middle of the last century [1750s]
This lady was enabled to make the purchase by a very remarkable instance of good fortune.
She had bought two tickets in one lottery, both of which became prizes, the one of £500, the other of £20,000."
The last person to live at Lady Place was a brother of Admiral Kempenfelt.
Concerning him a curious story is told in Murray's Handbook.
The brothers had each planted a thorn-tree, in which the owner of Lady Place took great pride.
"One day, on coming home, he found that the tree planted by the Admiral had withered away, and said, 'I feel sure that this is an omen that my brother is dead.'
That evening came the news of the loss of the Royal George."
The house, which contained a fine inlaid staircase and a grand saloon, its panels
"painted with upright landscapes, the leafings of which are executed with a kind of silver lacker", was pulled down and the more valuable part sold in the year 1839; but grass-grown mounds mark the site of the historic vaults; and the old cedars and other fine trees in the enclosed meadows are memorials of its former splendour.

[ TEMPLE LOCK ]

BISHAM ABBEY

BISHAM ABBEY.

Bisham comes next, a spot of rare attractions.
Between the wooded hills and the river there is a broad and fertile strath, the very place on which, in ancient times, monks "most did congregate".
Accordingly they soon got hold of a goodly estate at Bisham, and that grey old manor-house standing among groves of stately trees some little distance from the Thames marks the site, first of a house of the Templars, then of an Augustinian Priory.
The latter had about two centuries of tranquil existence, for it was founded in the year 1338, by William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury.
The last prior submitted to the change, adopted the tenets of the Reformers, and became Bishop of St. Davids.
Moreover, he took to himself a wife, who bore him five daughters, each one of whom had a bishop for her husband.
His memory is not held in great honour in the annals of St. Davids, for he cared more for money than for the good of the see.
After Bisham passed into the hands of secular owners it becomes better known to history.
Henry VIII. made a present of it to his discarded spouse, Anne of Cleves, and she, by royal permission, exchanged it with Sir Philip Hoby for a manor in Kent.
He was the last Englishman who was legate to the Pope at Rome, and, like many others of his nation, never left the place alive.
His brother, Sir Thomas, who succeeded to the estate, was ambassador to France, and he also died abroad.
In Queen Mary's time the Princess Elizabeth was committed to his charge, and she spent a considerable time within the walls of Bisham.
What she thought of the place and of her keeper may be inferred from a graceful compliment which she paid him on his first appearance at court after her accession.
"If I had a prisoner whom I wanted to be most carefully watched, I should intrust him to your charge; if I had a prisoner whom I wished to be most tenderly treated, I should intrust him to your care."
The house, which now belongs to the VanSittart family, is a picturesque old structure of grey stone, with pointed gables, mullioned windows, and a low tower; portions of it, for instance, the tower and the hall - once part of the convent chapel - are remnants of Montacute's abbey; but the larger portion of the building is later than the date of the suppression of the religious orders, most of it being late Tudor work, due to the Hoby family.
Bisham is said to have its ghost.
Lady Hoby, wife of Sir William, "walks" in one of the bedrooms, appearing as the duplicate, in opposite tints, of a portrait which hangs in the hall, and engaged in "washing her hands with invisible soap in imperceptible water", in a basin which, self-supported, moves on before her.
This is the cause which disturbs her rest:
"She had a child William, who, being a careless or clumsy urchin, kept always blotting his copy-book; so the mother did not spare the rod, and spoiled the child in a physical sense, for she whipped Master William till he died."
The author of "Murray's Guide-Book to Berkshire" states, as a curious coincidence, if not a corroboration of the story, that on altering the shutter of a window "a quantity of children's copy-books of the reign of Elizabeth were discovered pushed into the rubble between the joists of the floor, and that one of these was a copy-book which answered exactly to the story, as if the child could not write a single line without a blot."
Bisham has also its secret chamber, an indication that it was built when political struggles had their real perils.
Bisham Priory in former days - perhaps owing to its connection with the Montacutes, Earls of Salisbury - was the burial-place of several distinguished men, whose monuments once adorned the priory chapel, but have disappeared since it became a dwelling-place.
The following list of such interments is testimony to the perilous life led by the aristocracy of those days: -
"Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, who died at the siege of Orleans in 1428; Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick, beheaded at York in 1460; Richard Neville, 'the king-maker,' killed at the battle of Barnet, 1470; his brother John, Marquis of Montague, killed at the same battle; and Edward Plantagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, beheaded in 1499, for attempting to escape from confinement."
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave" was a true saying in the days of old.
Between the foeman's sword on the one hand and the headsman's axe on the other, a goodly proportion of our nobility came to untimely ends.

BISHAM CHURCH

BISHAM CHURCH.

The Hobys rest in the parish church.
This is beautifully situated close to the riverside.
Grand old trees cast their shadows on its graveyard and overhang the walk by the brink of the Thames.
The grass-grown plot studded with graves is almost merged with the trim garden of the rectory, the flowers in which brighten the view and pleasantly vary the greens of the foliage and of the grassy meadows.
These, too, are bright enough in spring-time, when they are dappled with its golden flowers, before the taller herbage of summer has begun to wave in the soft wind.
The tower of Bisham Church - the part most conspicuous from the river - is of very early date - a rude and rather curious piece of Norman work, which may be older than the days of Stephen, when the Templars first came to Bisham.
The body of the church is also picturesque, but it has been so greatly restored - even to rebuilding - of late years that it is no easy task to separate old from new.
At the present time its most interesting features are some of the monuments of the Hoby family, especially those to the two brothers mentioned above.
The widow of the second brother, Thomas, had the bodies of both brought back to England for burial at Bisham; and being a lady learned even for those days, when people did not, as in later times, suppose that a woman made the better wife for being as ignorant as a scullery-maid, she wrote them an epitaph in three languages.
The concluding lines on her husband's monument appear to express a willingness, under certain circumstances, to be consoled even for the loss of such a paragon: -

Give me, O God! a husband like unto Thomas,
Or else restore to me my husband Thomas!

She seems to have considered that the first part of her prayer was granted, as the second could hardly be expected, for before the year was out she married Sir Thomas Russell.
But on the whole the interior of Bisham Church will not detain the visitor for long; he will care rather to linger in the churchyard and its neighbourhood.
It is pleasant to pass up and down by the riverside under the shadow of the trees, to gaze upon the noble sweep of the Thames, and over its fertile valley plain, to seek some quiet spot which commands a view of the grey walls of Bisham Priory and the beautiful trees in its park.
Even the village is in keeping with the rest of the scene, and is brighter and prettier than is usual, and this is saying much; for though, as a rule, English cottages cannot compare in picturesqueness with many that we see on the other side of the Channel, the frequent poverty and monotony of their design is often atoned for by the creepers which blossom profusely on the walls, and the flowers which make the strip of ground in front one living posy.
But in Bisham not a few of the cottages are picturesque.
For some reason or other, partly, perhaps, owing to the absence of mechanical industries, the towns of the south and west of England are commonly, and the villages almost always, more attractive than in the north, and this disparity, as regards the latter, becomes still more marked when we cross the border; for a Scotch village often attains to the extreme limit of dreary ugliness.

MARLOW

GREAT MARLOW, FROM QUARRY WOODS.

Turning aside from the woods of Bisham and sweeping away yet farther into the broad valley plain, the stream of the Thames brings us to the quiet market-town of Great Marlow.
A suspension bridge crosses the river, and the gardens and houses on either side afford many scenes of quiet and homelike beauty.
Just below it are a weir and a mill, not without a certain picturesqueness; and from a distance the spire of the church, rising from among groups of trees, enhances the attraction of the scene.
In this little Buckinghamshire town, before the railway approached its outskirts, life must have passed peacefully, not to say sleepily; and even now, as it lies off the main line, it does not strike us as a place for over-stimulation of the nervous system.
The river, during a considerable part of the year, would still be almost as fit a scene for a poet's musing as it was when Shelley resided in the town, and wrote the "Revolt of Islam", spending much of his time dreamily floating in a boat upon the Thames.
The most conspicuous feature in Great Marlow, as has been already said, is its church, which stands near to the river and the bridge.
Unfortunately, it is one of those where "distance lends enchantment to the view".
The present building was erected in the year 1835, on the site of an older one.
Whatever this may have been, it could hardly have been so ugly as the present structure.
The style may be called Gothic - that is to say, the architect had in his mind some of the English parish churches of the thirteenth or fourteenth century; but it is the Gothic of what we may call the pre-Victorian revival, and about as like what it supposed to imitate as the "English as she is spoke" of the ingenious Portuguese is to our mother-tongue.
Efforts have been made, and we believe will continue to be made, to improve it.
For instance, the church was constructed for galleries; these have been pulled down - at some inconvenience, we should think, if a fair proportion of the population goes to church; and the interior has been divided by means of the usual arches into a nave and aisle.
These, as they come to an end before they reach the roof, have at present a rather forlorn aspect, and, as there is no particular merit in their design, scarcely justify their existence.
It is intended, we are informed, to rebuild the whole structure piecemeal; but as the original fabric appears to be in no danger of premature decay, it is a question whether it would not have been better to accept its ugliness, and employ the very large sum which must be expended before the work can be completed for other and more directly useful purposes.
The church, however, is not wholly without interest, as it contains one or two "curiosities".
Of these, one is a portrait of the "Spotted Boy," the work of Coventry, in 1811.
The lad was one of Richardson's "exhibits", and died at Great Marlow.
He was a negro, but was mottled with white patches on body and hair - as if he had been imperfectly operated on with soap after the manner of the advertising placards.
In fact, he was a parallel example in the human race to Barnum's famous white elephant.
The picture might by some be deemed more appropriate to the walls of Madame Tussaud's galleries than to those of a church; nevertheless, so long as it is there, it should be hung where it can be seen.
At the present time, the removal of the gallery staircase has resulted in "skying" it most effectually.
A good instance of modern mediæval absurdity may be seen in a monumental brass erected to the memory of a lady who died so recently as 1842; for in the inscription the words charitie and mercie occur as written.
More interesting, and in its way quaint, is the monument to a doughty Englishman, Sir Myles Hobart, who once represented Great Marlow in Parliament.
He was a steadfast opponent of the Court party in the troublous days before the Great Rebellion, and, on one occasion, with his own hands locked the door of the House during the reading of a protest against certain illegal taxes.
For this he was, of course, imprisoned; but it is pleasant to read that the Long Parliament voted a considerable sum to his family as an acknowledgment of his services and a compensation for his sufferings.
A bas-relief indicates the manner of his death, which was the result of an accident.
His horses ran away down Holborn Hill, upsetting the coach, and fatally injuring their master.

Great Marlow is in truth a town of unusual antiquity, for it is heard of before the Norman Conquest; but an old monastic barn by the bridge, and some fragments of an ancient building in the town, which is called the Deanery, are all that remain from mediæval times.
Of the latter, the most conspicuous remnants are two windows, with tracery of a rather Flamboyant character, which are incorporated into an old house, now undergoing “restoration”. In short, the lions of the town will not long detain the traveller, although he will be tempted to look rather longingly at some of its substantial houses, with their bright and pleasant flower-gardens.

WHO ATE THE PUPPY PIE?

There is a circumstance connected with Great Marlow, beneath the dignity of history indeed, which, however, as we are writing of the Thames, must not be passed over in silence. In former days—and perhaps still, for we do not wish to make experimental proof—the simple and apparently purposeless question, “Who ate the puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?” sufficed to throw the bargee of the Thames into a state of mind which could only find adequate expression in words which more than bordered on profanity.
The venom rankling in the taunt is thus explained:—The landlord of the inn at Medmenham had received private information that certain bargemen meditated that night a foray on his larder.
He was a humorous man, who had just drowned a litter of young puppies.
So he had their corpses baked in a pie, which he placed in the larder, and did not sit up to keep guard.
The larder was robbed, the pie was carried off and conveyed to Marlow Bridge, where the plunderers feasted, as they supposed, on young rabbits.

Below the weir, where the Thames is parted by willow-covered islands, are some pleasant nooks for the artist who loves riverside scenery, and quiet spots where he may pursue his work without the presence of a small circle of gaping bystanders.
Brothers of the angle also find much employment near Marlow, as the fishing is noted.
Taunt, in his useful little “Guide to the Thames”, tells us that he saw a trout weighing eight pounds, which had just been caught near Quarry Woods, and that in the hostel called the “Anglers” is one stuffed, which is reputed to be the largest that has been taken in the Thames.

A PICNIC AT QUARRY WOODS.

From Great Marlow weir and locks the Thames sweeps back through level meadows to the foot of Quarry Woods.
There is now a pleasant diversity in the scenery.
On the left the level plain continues, over which we glance backwards to the spire and houses and trees of Great Marlow, and sideways for a longer distance to where the grey, stumpy tower of Little Marlow is almost concealed by foliage.
But on the right bank the steep wooded slope of the ancient valley which runs at the back of the groves of Bisham is now approached by the Thames, whose stream for a time hugs the foot of the declivity, and gives us a foretaste of what is to come at Cliefden.
At one place the dense woodland is interrupted by a pretty cottage, and an old chalk-pit has been utilised as a part of its garden.
A pleasant retreat this would be from the time when the woods begin to brighten with the first buds of spring until they are dappled with the many tints of the dying foliage of autumn.
But these nooks and corners by the Thames are no longer, as they would have been a generation since, suited for the abode of an anchorite.
All through the summer day there is now little solitude to be found on this part of the river.
Boats laden with pleasure-seekers pass and repass—from skiffs and dinghies to steam-launches and house-boats—and there are not seldom obvious signs of Londoners at play.
Still, there are quiet, dreamy hours when all the charm of the scene can be enjoyed—most of all in the earlier months, when the flowers are at their brightest, and the verdure is at its freshest; when the dweller in the city is still tied down by duty or by the desire of gain to the crowded streets, and must be content with extensive views of chimney-pots.

BOURNE END

After a time the river once more deserts the shadows of the wooded slopes and strikes out again into the open plain.
A reach begins when the islands are passed, pleasant when the wind is favourable to those who love sailing.
The surface of the water lies open to the breeze, and from bank to bank it is a little wider than usual.
In other respects the scene, after the beauty of the last stage, becomes a little monotonous.
The chalk downs have receded and their slope has diminished on the right; on the left they are still distant.
There are but few trees by the river bank, and the meadows on either side are level and uninteresting; even the embankment of the railway, which we are now approaching, is a prominent and not attractive feature in the landscape.
The bridge, however, for a railway bridge, is not unpleasing; and when we have left behind both it and some works on the nearer side the scene once more brightens.
Just inland is Bourne End Station, where the branch line from Great Marlow joins that which runs from Maidenhead to High Wycombe and Thame.

SWANS

A GROUP OF SWANS. (From an Instantaneous Photograph.)

No one can journey a mile or two along the Thames without noticing the swans, which add so much to the beauty of the royal river, as they “float double, swan and shadow”, on some quiet pool, or come ruffling up towards some passing skiff, in defence of their young.
A sheet of water is hardly complete as a picture without some swans floating upon it.
White specks in the distance, forms of exquisite grace and purity of colour in the foreground, they give a harmony to the composition and add to the scene the interest of life.
The moorhen and coot are too inconspicuous as they lurk under the reeds, or swim hurriedly across the open water.
The swallow and the kingfisher, brilliant though the plumage of the latter, dart too swiftly by to produce any lasting impression on the mind; but the swan sails slowly along, and lingers here and there, in harmony with the traveller, who is seeking only to drink his fill of nature’s charms.
The abundance of swans on the Thames is due to the fact that they are carefully tended.
They are not to be reckoned among feræ naturæ; indeed, though other species are chance visitors, the “mute swan” is never, strictly speaking, a wild bird in England; but they are private property, the Dyers’ and the Vintners’ Companies being among the principal owners.
Keepers are appointed to look after them, especially in the building season, when they are in some danger from predaceous animals, and more from predaceous persons.
Still, they can take pretty good care of themselves, for the cock bird is very fierce in defence of his nest or young, and can deal formidable blows with his pinions, although, if he has succeeded in breaking a limb, as popular report asserts, the sufferer’s bones must have been rather weak.
The nests are generally built on the “aits”, where the osier beds afford a quiet retreat and a good foundation for the capacious structure.
This is constructed roughly of twigs and reeds, and raised some little height above the ground.
In former days, when fay ce que voudras was a motto adopted by City Companies more easily than in the present, they used, as sole conservators of the River Thames, to make an excursion annually in their barges, with all due ceremony and festivity, in order to count and mark their swans.
This process was called “swan upping,” corrupted generally into “swan hopping”.
The swans were caught and examined, sometimes not without a good deal of trouble, for a strong old cock bird did not submit himself very willingly to the physical suasion of the “swan crook”. Cygnets were marked on the bill with the special symbol of the Company to which the parent birds belonged.
The Vintners’ Company mark was two nicks, whence, by a slight corruption, came the curious inn-sign of the “swan with two necks”.
“Swan upping” began on the Monday after St. Peter’s Day, just at the time when a water excursion would be most pleasant, in the full warmth of summer, and before all the spring brightness had passed away from the foliage.
At an earlier date the birds appear to have been regarded as royal property; and in Hone’s “Every-day Book”, under the heading of July 12, is the reprint of a curious tract published in 1570, entitled, “The Order for Swannes”. It is here enacted that all private owners must compound with the King’s Majesty for the right to use a mark; while penalties, commonly fines of thirteen shillings and fourpence, were inflicted for stealing the eggs, for unlawful carrying of swan-hooks, and the like; but the erasure or counterfeiting of marks entailed a heavier fine and a year’s imprisonment.

ABNEY HOUSE

Abney House, below the bridge, is one of those places by the river which must often set the wayfarer coveting, in despite of the decalogue.
Climbing plants of many kinds mantle with flowers and with leaves, large and small, the verandas and walls of the house; and their green foliage is in pleasant contrast with its red-coloured bricks. The smooth-cut lawns are green even in the hottest season, and are interspersed with living bouquets of bright-coloured flowers.
The shrubberies are adorned and the lawns are shaded with many a rare tree, such as cedars and conifers of diverse kind, which by the side of the English river call up memories of their distant homes in far-off lands.

DISTANT VIEW OF CLIVEDEN WOODS

The woods of Cliefden are now in view in front of us on the right, and henceforth remain a conspicuous feature in the landscape, though it is yet some time before our boat will be gliding along in the silence of their shadows.
There is a pleasant reach below the Bourne End bridge, during which the views are more varied and the riverside is less monotonous than on the part which we have left above it.
The willows growing by the stream are always pleasant to the eye as they whiten in the summer breeze; there are sure to be tufts of flowers here and there by the waterside, and if these be wanting we need not weary of the woods of Cliefden, on the high chalk escarpments, as they stretch away inland on our left.

COOKHAM

The ivy-mantled tower of Cookham begins to show in front, as we approach one of the prettiest spots on the Thames.
If it be summer-time, there is evidence that this opinion is held by many.
There is no lack of boats on the river; here is a house-boat moored by the shore; in yonder meadow some small white tents proclaim that two or three parties are “camping out”—all being direct indications that the neighbourhood of Cookham has many admirers.
Tent life may be all very well in fine weather, but its charms on a rainy day must be more than dubious.
Granted the most studious habits, granted that power of immediate concentration upon some absorbing treatise—let us say “the philosophy of the uncreated nothing”—which few possess—at any rate, in holiday time; granted a companion of great but not too provoking amiability, and yet we will undertake to say that a tent will seem, at the end of a day’s steady rain, to be rather cramped quarters, and the inmate’s thoughts will turn regretfully homewards.
Excitement may no doubt be found sometimes when the rain detects shoddy workmanship, and begins to drip upon the floor, or there is a battle with a gale of wind; but an incident of this kind, though a variety, is not always a pleasant one.

COOKHAM CHANNELS

Below Cookham Bridge, a light iron structure, the river broadens out before it splits up into channels, in a way that is rather perplexing to new-comers.
On the left hand is the original main channel, which takes a great bend outwards towards Hedsor before curving back to pass under the shadow of the Cliefden woods.
Then comes “the cut”, with its locks—an artificial canal made to avoid the circuit and difficulties of the old channel.
Beyond this are the entrances to two smaller channels, one leading to Odney weir, the other entering the Thames some distance below Cliefden House.
In the neighbourhood of Cookham it is often hard to say whether the foreground or the distance is more beautiful.
Here the ancient fabric of the church, with its ivy-clad tower, rises from its trim churchyard, surrounded with aged trees, some of them little more than huge trunks, which still retain enough vitality to support a short but thick output of branches.

FERRY INN, COOKHAM

Here is an attractive hostel by the waterside.

COOKHAM DELIGHTS

Here are the narrower arms of the river running up invitingly by the side of pleasant gardens and under the shadows of giant trees—places where the idler may linger for a long summer afternoon in some shady nook.
Contemplative pursuits appear to be much in favour near Cookham.
Fishing for roach out of a punt beguiles the time, and the excitement is of the mildest form, one, probably, from which few persons, however highly strung their nerves, would be debarred.
An aroma of botanic origin, but not attributable to any flowers, sometimes steals over the water, to announce that the boat, half hid among the bushes, is not untenanted, and that the occupant is a victim to the herb denounced once by an enthusiastic divine as “the gorging fiend”.
Here is a student of books, but the volume bears a resemblance to the literature of railway stalls rather than of the academy.
Here is a devotee of the brush.
He, at least, is at work, but in a leisurely way, as if he entered too fully into the spirit of the picture to spoil it by over-much intensity.
In short, Cookham is one of the prettiest, pleasantest, laziest spots that the peripatetic traveller could find within a two hours’ journey from Charing Cross.

COOKHAM.

COOKHAM CHURCH

Cookham Church, which has just been mentioned, is almost hidden by the bridge and by houses from the prettiest part of the river, though well seen higher up the stream.
Its low tower is partly covered with ivy; the body of the church is of various dates, the oldest part being Early English.
It contains several modern stained-glass windows and old monuments, especially brasses.
The cook of Queen Eleanor, wife of Henry III.; the “master clerk of the Spycery, under King Harry the Sixt”, have their tombs within the church; a modern monument by Flaxman commemorates the death by drowning of Sir Isaac Pocock, and a bas-relief by Woolner adorns the tomb of Frederick Walker, the well-known artist.

HEDSOR PARK

In the distance, to the left of Cliefden, and seemingly forming with it one demesne, lies Hedsor Park, the seat of Lord Boston, with its imitation castle, which would be improved, pictorially speaking, by a judiciously administered dose of dynamite.
Hedsor overlooks the old course of the river, but is not approached by the traveller on the Thames, who has to follow the new cut, the only navigable channel. There is nothing attractive in the house, which is in the modern Italian style, and is hardly worthy of the magnificent situation it occupies.
The tiny church, which is within the park enclosure, and has been beautifully restored, contains some monuments of the Irby family.
Dropmore Park, with its noted pinetum and fine gardens, lies still farther back, another creation of the same reign.
The house was erected and the grounds were laid out by Lord Grenville, at the beginning of the present century, about the time that he was Prime Minister.

COOKHAM LOCK CUT

The chief point of interest about the new cut—which, as might be expected, has rather too much of the Dutch canal about it to attract the traveller just fresh from Cookham—is that, in making it, a number of skeletons, with swords and spears of Roman workmanship, were found entombed together; indicating that these meadows had been the scene of some long-forgotten conflict.

COOKHAM LOCK

A CROWD IN COOKHAM LOCK.

At the lower end of the new cut we pass through a lock into the main channel of the Thames, a short distance below a weir, and at the very foot of the Cliefden woods.

CLIVEDEN DEEP

It would be difficult to find a fairer scene on any river within the limits of our island, and not easy did we take a wider range over the surface of the earth.
On both sides Art has been called in to the aid of Nature; but that aid has been only bestowed where it is a boon.
The level island on the right hand has been converted into a beautiful garden, where clusters of bright flowers stud the greenest of lawns, and trees from distant lands are mingled with those of native growth.
On the opposite shore the hand of the gardener is less conspicuous, and his art, though the more subtle, has been concealed.
The chalky upland, which for some miles past has formed a marked feature in the scenery, and has bounded our view in front, now descends to the river brink in steep slopes, sometimes almost in cliffs.
Between the foot of these and the water, only here and there does a narrow strip of level land intervene.
On two or three of these a picturesque cottage has been built, and the brightest, gayest, trimmest of gardens planted; but the slope itself is one mass of trees and brushwood, through which, though very rarely, gleams forth a little crag of the white chalk rock.
All the trees of England seem to have congregated on this bank: there are hazel and maple and thorn; there are ash and oak, and beech and elm; there are chestnut and sycamore, and, especially at this upper end, the brighter tints of the deciduous trees, and of the broad-leaved evergreens, are dappled by the sombre hues of Scotch firs, with their ruddy trunks, and of ancient yews, very possibly lineal descendants of trees among which the ancient Britons hunted, before ever a Roman galley floated on the Thames.
For Cliefden Woods, though doubtless they are in part the result of the gardener’s art, are very probably a relic of the primæval forests which once covered so large a part of England.
As in the Kentish Weald, this rough and broken ground must always have been waste, and there trees would take root, from the time that the slope first was furrowed out by the river, and there would be the “lurking-place of wild beasts”, in days when the huntsman wore skins for clothing, and pointed his arrows with chipped flints.
Down by the river’s brink what a wealth of beauty is often to be found; the waterside plants grow strong and free, pink willow-herb and purple loosestrife, yellow fleabane and St. >John’s wort, with numbers more which it is needless to mention; while the bank above is green in summer with many a herb, and bright in spring with many a flower.
No trim shrubbery this on the Cliefden steeps; nature is left to wanton at will—nay, even to struggle for existence.
Ivy and briony and wild bine festoon and sometimes half smother the trees, while the traveller’s joy creeps and clings in masses so profuse that from afar it seems to flicker like grey lights among the green shadows.

CLIVEDEN HOUSE

From this position we cannot see the mansion, but from time to time as we pass down the stream it comes into view, standing above the slope on the edge of the plateau.
Its absence is a boon rather than a loss; its clock-tower, indeed, as it rises above the hills, occasionally forms a pleasant addition to the view; but the house is not particularly striking in itself, and the design is wholly unsuitable for its position.
That requires a building of irregular outline and broken, but well-conceived sky-line.
This magnificent site, above the great river cliff, ought to have been crowned with a group of buildings, whose outline should suggest a cluster of hills.
Yet the design of Cliefden House could readily be imitated with three or four packing-cases.
It was a great opportunity, such, for instance, as that of the architect of the Parliament Buildings at Ottawa not only had, but also seized; but here, as is the rule, it has been wholly wasted, for to find an architect who has also the feelings of an artist is rare indeed.
Since the Middle Ages they have been seldom more than learned master-masons. So we shall look as little as possible at Cliefden House, and as much as possible at its woods, and be thankful even for the tiny mercies of its clock-tower.
The present house occupies the site of an earlier mansion, which was destroyed by fire, as was that which it succeeded. The destruction of the first house, in the year 1751, may be used to point a moral against reading in bed—at any rate, by the light of a candle.
One of the maid-servants, while indulging in this practice, fell asleep, the candle set the hangings on fire, she woke up in too great a fright to do anything to extinguish the flames, and in a surprisingly short time almost the whole of the mansion was destroyed, but little of the furniture and few of the pictures being saved.

This house had been erected by the notorious George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, whose duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury is among the memories of another part of the Thames; and when the latter fell wounded, it was to the shelter of this mansion that the guilty pair went off in triumph.
Time, however, brought its revenge, when Villiers died “in the worst inn’s worst room”:

How changed from him
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliefden’s proud alcove
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love....
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.

To him, as owner of Cliefden, in course of time, succeeded Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III. Of him -

Who was alive and is dead,
There’s no more to be said,

except that through him the national air “Rule Britannia” is associated with Cliefden.
Thomson the poet had been taken into favour by this prince at a time when he was, to some extent, the patron of literature. Thus the masque of Alfred was first performed within the walls of Cliefden, and into this masque “Rule Britannia”, composed by Dr. Arne, was introduced, and has alone escaped oblivion.

This house, which appears to have been a stately structure, was destroyed, as has already been explained, and it was rebuilt in the present century by Sir G. Warrender, from whom it was purchased by the Duke of Sutherland.
Another great fire occurred in 1849, after which the present house was built.
The gardens are very beautiful, but the walks through the groves which mantle the slope—through the dense vegetation and trailing undergrowth—are in their way not less attractive.
The cliff runs by the riverside for more than a mile, unbroken except at one spot, rather beyond the house, where a glen, now forming part of the gardens, winds down to the riverside, and affords an easier access to the terraced plateau above.

FORMOSA ISLAND

Though less favourably situated for prospect or for health, there are, as we have said, homes of no little beauty on the opposite side of the river.
Of these the most conspicuous bears the name of Formosa, and so far as its gardens are concerned it would be difficult to find one more appropriate.
To apply it to the house would be flattery of which few would be capable.
White Place, which obtains its name from the colour of the stone of which it is built, lies back from the river.
It, too, like Cliefden, is connected with the memory of Villiers; and its avenue of elms is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a “white lady without a head”, who was one of his victims.
It is difficult to describe the beauty of this part of the river, because it does not so much consist in notable features as in a series of exquisite combinations of subtly varied forms, and in delicate harmonies of colour.
There is, of course, the one great effect of wooded slope and of flowing stream, which differs but little from place to place; but there is in addition, at every step, some novel harmony of its minor features—fresh drapery of the aged limbs of trees, a new contrast of sombre yew boughs with the bright green of the sprouting beech or the tender tints of the maple, or of the darkling water beneath the shadow of the wooded bank, with the sparkle of the sun on the ripples of the stream.
There float a pair of swans, white as snow; there darts a kingfisher, a flying emerald; there the lilies speckle the stream with gold; there the tall willow-herb forms a pink-tinted fringe to the river, and with its summer splendour alleviates our regret for the many-coloured carpets which in spring-time overspread the meadows.

CLIVEDEN ISLANDS - BAVINS GULLS or SLOW GROVE ISLANDS or PICNIC ISLAND

Beyond Cliefden, where the plateau begins to slope more gently towards the plain, the river is broken up, and its scenery is pleasantly varied by a group of low islands densely clothed with willows.

BOULTER'S LOCK

THE LANDING-STAGE, RAY MEAD below BOULTER'S LOCK.

Boulter’s lock forms a new feature in the view.

TAPLOW COURT

Near here is Taplow Court, which has a most attractive garden.
So also have smaller houses near the river; even some mills, which would be tolerable but for their chimneys, bedeck their bank-sides with flowers.
To praise these villas would be only to repeat a formula; enough to say that if passers by break the tenth commandment in regard to these little arcadias, it is not for want of temptation; indeed, a casuist might argue that the owners were not morally justified in affording such an opportunity for coveting. In extenuation, however, they might plead that they so much increased the beauty of the river, and enhanced the general gratification, that they might be forgiven for causing lapses in particular cases.
The guide-book states that the saloon of Taplow Court was built in imitation of Kirkwall Cathedral.
This must be a curiosity; it sounds almost as attractive as a bedroom built in imitation of the catacombs.
For this, however, the present owners are not responsible.
The house was erected by the Earl of Orkney, one of the Duke of Marlborough’s companions in the great European wars.

TAPLOW WOODS.

Now houses begin to thicken on the river bank, and boat-sheds are dotted on the strand.
The view of the landing-stage at Ray Mead will give an idea of the appearance of this part of the Thames, when the pleasant summer weather brings good times to the boatmen.
Maidenhead on the one hand, Taplow on the other, straggle—vaguely, in the latter case—down to the riverside.

MAIDENHEAD BRIDGE, MAIDENHEAD RAILWAY BRIDGE

The Thames is crossed first by the seven-arched stone bridge that carries the high road;
secondly, by the single arch of brick, one of Brunel’s bold designs, that supports the Great Western Railway.
The former has been for long the site of a bridge across the Thames—at any rate, from a date prior to the reign of Edward III.
At this spot there was once some smart fighting, when the Duke of Surrey, brother of Richard II., held the bridge against Bolingbroke’s troops all through one winter’s night, so as to cover the retreat of his friends, himself at last stealing away without molestation.
Except for this, and for being the place where Charles I., when fortune had deserted him, met his children, after a long separation, Maidenhead is nearly in the blessed condition of a place that has no history.
It has been asserted to derive its name from the fact that the head of a British maiden, one of the eleven thousand virgins martyred with St. Ursula, at Cologne, was kept here; but the etymology is as legendary as the maiden, the true derivation being Maiden hythe, as there was here a wharf, or “hythe”, for timber in olden times.
The town is not in any way remarkable.
Though its streets are less busy than in the old days of stage-coaches and post-horses, it has a well-to-do look, and there are not a few pleasant residences in its outskirts; but it is very destitute of attractions for the antiquarian.
The parish church is modern, having been rebuilt about sixty years since; but that of Boyne Hill will afford satisfaction to those with whom the movement in favour of ritualistic development finds favour, and as a work of the architect is far superior to churches of the earlier part of the present century.
The only building in Maidenhead which carries us back to days earlier than the last century is a block of almshouses, which, though plain, has a rather picturesque appearance.
At the end of our journey we look back on a view, more artificial, but hardly less pretty, than most of those which we have seen.
Railways are often deservedly execrated, but it may be doubted whether something may not be forgiven to the Great Western for the singularly attractive view which its bridge affords.
The riverside between the two bridges is occupied by well-built houses, with lovely gardens and shrubberies. Green lawns, brightened with beds of flowers, groups of shady trees, villa residences of not unpleasing design, and an island on the river, combine to form a view that is not readily surpassed within an equal distance from London.

T. G. BONNEY

CHAPTER 6, MAIDENHEAD TO WINDSOR
by By H. SCHÜTZ WILSON.

Map: Maidenhead to Windsor, Around Maidenhead, Engraving: Bray Church, Bray Church, Jesus Hospital, Bray, [ Painting: 'The Harbour of Refuge, by F Walker ], Reminiscence of rowing race, The Nature of the Thames, Pretty Girls, Thames Weather, Monkey Island, Engraving: Surley, Surley, Engraving: Boveney Lock, Boveney Lock, Eton College, Windsor Castle, Engraving: Windsor Castle from Romney Lock, St George's Chapel, Windsor, Two Poetic Prisoners at Windsor, Shakespeare at Windsor

MAIDENHEAD TO WINDSOR.

MAIDENHEAD TO WINDSOR.

The next scene in our shifting panorama of the gentle river will be the fair stretch of bank and stream which extends from picturesque Maidenhead to the winding shore from which rise the proud towers of Royal Windsor.
From its source, at which a little bright spring bubbles up with a low, softly singing sound, from amid stones and moss and grass, until it becomes merged into the immensity of ship-bearing ocean, our Thames, unhasting but unresting, flows for ever onward between source and sea.

Thames! the most lov’d of all the Ocean’s sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.

And Denham adds a wish—

O, could I flow like thee! and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme;
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o’erflowing, full.

One of the charms of Thames is, that the calm river
“glideth at its own sweet will”.
It is no straight-cut, level, mechanical Dutch canal; but it winds and curves, it widens and it narrows, according to its own caprice and delight.
And then, through what scenery it wanders!
Locks are erected, in order artificially to check its full-flowing stream; but then Thames subdues even locks to himself, and makes them—especially the old wooden ones—singularly picturesque.
Man is sometimes too many for him, but Thames, when allowed to have his own way, will tolerate nothing about him that is not lovely as himself. I love to think of the dear old river through all the seasons, and under all aspects.
I fancy the sun-bright day, and then “the dark, the silent stream” of evening, when the untrembling shadows are so deep and full; when the belated boat is itself a creeping shade, hardly seen, but regularly audible through the sound of its beating rowlocks, and the splashing fall of its rowing oars.
And who can ever forget the cool freshness of the dewy summer morning, before the sun’s “burning eye” gleams upon the shining surface of the watery sheen? Then the still, dusky stream becomes “clad in the beauty of a thousand stars”; and then, perhaps, moonlight sleeps silverly upon flood and banks, on trees, and on dreamy habitations of slumbering men.
The back-waters are then all mystery, the birds have all gone to roost; sleep and silence rest upon the resting river, the peace of night is over all, and still the gentle river glideth ever to the sea.

The Thames has, however, undergone one disastrous change.
It has become crowded, noisy, vulgar.
Its beauties remain what they ever were; but its character has deteriorated.
Gone are the pure peace, the cool calm, the tranquil seclusion which—say twenty years ago—rendered it the most charming haunt of the lover of Nature, of the poet, too much in populous city pent, who sought an alterative of mental repose in most lovely and most quiet scenery.
An aged ghost, restlessly revisiting the cari luoghi[ belovéd place ], must often find a change, great and sad, in the old places in which life was lived in love and joy; and he who knew the tranquil Thames in the old time, long ago, must find, in its brawling loudness of to-day, a change which renders sad the heart.
I remember it when there were no steam-launches.
Now, Captain Jinks, of the Selfish, too often troubles the water, as he, with his friends, enjoy themselves on the pure river which they pollute with their presence, and disturb with their rowdyism.
[ "Captain Jinks of the Selfish" is the caption of a Punch cartoon by Frederick Walker, depicting a fat, cigar smoking steam launch owner and his cronies arrogantly making an immense wash and disturbing the river at Monkey Island ]
I am credibly informed that one Sunday no less than nine hundred pleasure-craft passed through Boulter’s Lock.
To what secret ait can the river nymphs now fly for rest and delicate delight?
Yes, the dear old river is sadly changed indeed, and our joy in it is lessened and lowered; but its own inherent loveliness is almost unspoiled; and we have to console ourselves by thinking, with Coleridge, that—

We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone doth Nature live.

AROUND MAIDENHEAD

Shaking off dull thoughts, let us stand for a moment on Maidenhead Bridge, which was built in 1772 by Sir Robert Taylor.
Maidenhead, or Maidenhithe, is now almost the central point of those pleasure-lovers who frequent the Thames.
Looking up to Boulter’s Lock, which suggests very pleasant memories of Mr. Gregory’s charming picture of it, we see on high the white mansion of Cliefden, embowered in a wealth of thickly clustering noble woods, which slope downwards from hill crest to river bank, and present a long sky-line composed of every shade of ever-varying greenness.
Nearer to us, on the right, rise from out the thick leafage the turrets and spires of Taplow Court.
On the left is the ivied Bridge House; on the right the old hostelry, the well-known “Orkney Arms”. In the golden days of Mr.and Mrs. Skindle the house was white, but it is now of brand-new flaring red-brick, thickly pointed.
Before us, where the channel slopes round towards the Lock, we see a large ait of alders.
Gardens, flowers, trees, adorn the land, while the water is crowded with boats and punts.
Looking towards Bray, the view is spoiled by the railway bridge, which is a leading case of engineering versus the picturesque.
The railway bridge need not, however, mar our pleasure much, for shall we not soon row under it on our way to Windsor?

And now our boat awaits us at Mr. Bond’s landing-stage, [ beside Maidehead Bridge ] 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.

BRAY CHURCH

BRAY CHURCH.

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;

JESUS HOSPITAL, BRAY

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”.
[ H. Schütz Wilson would so obviously have reproduced this picture if he could, that I now show it as a footnote. It was not in the original. ]

'The Harbour of Refuge' by Frederick Walker

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. I saw the window from which the painter made his study of the place—a study of fact which his genius afterwards so nobly idealised.
As we row away from Bray, my mind is full of the picture and of its painter; and a reminiscence of my dead friend, the gentle artist, Walker, rises in my thought: a reminiscence which will, I hope, fitly find a place here.

A REMINISCENCE OF ROWING FROM MAIDENHEAD TO MARLOW IN 1866

At the time during which Fred Walker was staying at Cookham I was very frequently rowing on the river.
A dear old friend, Mr. E. E. Stahlschmidt, was my constant companion, and we were much in the habit of using a light outrigged pair-oar, which was a fairly fast, though rather a crank boat, and which could carry a sitter who could or would sit still and steer.
We were staying at the “Orkney Arms” at Maidenhead, and Fred Walker inhabited a cottage at Cookham.
It was arranged one day that we were to row our boat from Maidenhead to Cookham, and were there to take Walker on board, and then to row him to Marlow and back.
The day was one at the end of May in 1866.
How well I remember that row! It seems to me that the same sun is shining to-day that shone upon that day, so vividly does the fair by-flown time come back to me.
We passed by the Cliefden Woods, by Formosa, and through Cookham Lock, and then rowed down the narrow arm of water which is opposite to Hedsor, and joins the main stream a little below Cookham Bridge.
No doubt as to whether Walker were ready.
The slight, active figure was dancing about with delight as he hailed us.
He was full of joy, was quivering with excitement.
The day was warm and fine, but the sky was grand with towering cumulus cloud-masses, which might change to nimbus clouds, and then mean rain.
We went ashore, and strolled about the pretty, quiet, old village, looking at, amongst other things, the churchyard in which the great painter who was that day so much alive now rests in death.
At length we were ready for our voyage, and we entered the boat.
Walker was steering, I was pulling stroke, and my friend was bow.

It happened that while we were stopping at Cookham, a randan boat was also waiting there to start.
This boat put off just when we did, and when both boats reached the broad, open water, the randan proposed a race to Marlow.
Both my friend and myself would have treated such a proposal for a scratch race with extreme contempt; but not so our coxswain.
His keen nature always craved excitement, and he eagerly accepted the randan’s challenge.
I told him that it was all nonsense, and not worth doing; but race he would.
I then warned him that a race to Marlow was a long one, and that I should pull a slow stroke, so that he must not be surprised if the other boat got a long way ahead.
I knew that my bow could pull steadily any stroke that was set him.
We were both rowing a good deal at that time, and were in decent training.
The preposterous race commenced; a thing that would have been comic, but for the intense eagerness and feverish excitement of our eminent but nervous little coxswain.
His eyes grew large, he breathed short, his face was pale. If something of moment had depended upon the race he could not have been more in earnest.
One annoying result of his mental condition was, that he kicked and stamped about, and rocked the boat.
I cautioned, and entreated him to sit quietly; but I preferred a request with which he could only with difficulty comply.
As I expected, the randan started pulling with all its might; and soon went away from us.
Poor Walker was in despair.
He saw the other boat apparently gaining fast, and he was seized with twitchings.
In a voice weak with anguish, he implored us to “wire up, you fellows; wire up! Oh, you don’t know how far they’re getting ahead.
For Heaven’s sake, pull all you know!” He was depressed and dismayed, and was really unhappy.

I could not talk much, I could only growl out an occasional adjuration to “be quiet!” an injunction with which he complied the better because he thought that we were losing fast.
I continued pulling very steadily a long stroke of about twenty-nine, and was well backed up.
The other boat still went ahead, and poor despondent Walker was almost in tears.
A mile or more is traversed, and I begin to fancy that I can hear the rowing of the other boat.
Presently Walker’s frantic joy tells us that we are gaining upon them, and he urges us to furious exertions.
Of his counsels we took no notice, but pulled steadily the old, long stroke. Then we began to draw level with the antagonist, and soon I saw a bit of the boat.
We never looked up or altered the stroke; but Walker chortled aloud, and could not restrain some expressions of exulting and emotional persiflage.
We tried in vain to dissuade him.
He was too excitable for such self-repression.
At length I found my oar pulling level with the scull of the randan, and a little later I was up to the bow oar.
The randan put on a spurt, but we drew quietly away, and had passed them when the boats were a couple of miles from home.
Walker’s triumph was irrepressible; his laughter was long and loud, and I thought that he would have tumbled overboard.
He would mock at the other boat.
When we were well clear of the randan, I saw that they were pumped out, and were splashing wildly.
No further danger from them.
We increased our distance gradually, passed through the lock, and had finished our luncheon at the “Compleat Anglers” before the defeated randan arrived.
During our meal, we were looking at the scene of Walker’s delicious picture, the “Marlow Ferry”. He was delightedly elated at the result of the little race—kept talking about it with the eagerness of a happy child, and admitted gleefully how efficient the long, quiet stroke was, especially in a hard four-mile pull against stream.
He was happy that day.

Afterwards we walked out along the banks which look on Bisham Woods. Then the born painter forgot the race, and became absorbed in his deep, reverent love of nature.
Supporting his chin upon his hands, he lay down on the warm, dry turf, and his large eyes dilated as he gazed, with inner rapture, upon that lovely scene, glowing in the light of such a perfect sunny day.
He had no gift of expression—except with the brush in his skilful hand.
He could never find expression in words.
I remember hearing him murmur then, as he gazed long and lovingly upon a calm beauty that he could feel so well, “Opalescent!” That was all he said; but his spirit had drunk in the joy, the peace, the glory of the scene and time.
He was probably seeing a picture; though he did not lean to painting full sunlight.
His cheek even then was hollow; his large eyes were dangerously bright; his whole aspect expressed his ambition, his self-consuming art-soul, his terribly if exquisitely-strung nervous system, and fatally excitable temperament. We did not then foresee that the frail frame, so sensitive and delicate, would fail so sadly and so soon.
His was, indeed—

A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er informed the tenement of clay

Now, by the sweet banks of the fair river that he loved so well, the gentle and gifted painter sleeps his last sleep beneath the shadow of the old Cookham church tower.
The Thames is all the dearer to those who have often seen it with Frederick Walker.
A sacred memory is blended with the river’s loveliness.

We rowed him back that day to Maidenhead, and afterwards to Cookham. For some time after he spoke often, and spoke joyously, of the little scratch race which I have now endeavoured, with a sad, yet soft regret, to recall to my own recollection, and to bring to the sympathetic knowledge of my readers.
Those who knew the man will ever love him; those that did not know him personally may well love the ardent, strenuous painter for the sake of his pure and gentle art.

THE NATURE OF THE THAMES

The Thames, following Sheridan’s advice, flows ever between its banks—and then what banks they are!
As our boat glides along the sliding stream, we pass by many a fair and stately home of ancient peace; we pass many a smooth lawn and garden gay with flowers; we pass by rushes, willows, aits; we pass noble woods, and full meadows in which the rich grass is studded with white and yellow flowers, while sunlight is softly speckled by the calm shadows of lofty, feathery elms.
The tall elms have thick clusters of foliage glowing in sunshine, and beneath these bright leaf-clumps sleep deep hollows of soft shade.
Yes, our Thames is emphatically a summer stream.
We row by reeds, the home of swans, the haunt of moor-hens; by islets which bear alders, osiers, weeds, and rushes.
Reflected in the water is the purple colour of the wild foxglove, while the many bank flowers are interspersed with meadow-sweet, with loose-strife, and with broad dock-leaves.
On the shining surface of the bright, calm water float lovely lilies, white or yellow, which are connected by long, wavy stems with roots which hold firmly to the ground at the very bottom of the river.
We pass the turbulent mill-stream, and the foam-fretted weir; we see picturesque eel-bucks and shady backwaters.
We wind and curve with the ever wayward flood, and we find but few stretches which fail of beauty or are wanting in peace.

PRETTY GIRLS

The Thames is the chosen haunt, too, of pleasant painters and of pretty women; and to this choice combination the grateful stream lends a charm as great as that which it receives from such artists and such girls.
Truly, our Thames is almost too fair to be looked upon except on holidays.
Following the law of natural or elective affinities, fair women are attracted by the fair river.
I think that I never was upon the Thames without seeing some specimen, or specimens, of female loveliness and grace.
Pretty girls belong as naturally as the swans do to our Thames.
It is a singular fact that natural objects of great charm allure to themselves suitable women.
Art does not, as a rule, draw to itself much feminine youth and charm; but the Thames emphatically does so. Look at that boat which we have just passed.
What loveliness and love in those two young, graceful girls who are being rowed, while one of them—the one in the boating hat—steers.
What eyes those were which they rested for a moment upon our passing craft!
Which do you prefer?
the one in the blue serge frock, or the taller one in the white robe?
I don’t know; I could not decide; but I do know that we shall probably meet with more distracting charmers before our little voyage shall cease.
[ This slightly non politically correct sentiment is echoed by Ashby-Sterry, 'The Thames Minstrel', in almost the same words ]
Girls often steer very well, and sometimes they row, especially with light sculls, very admirably.
I have known pretty young ladies who sculled deliciously, and who lent to the exercise a distinctively feminine skill and grace.

THAMES WEATHER

The Thames is essentially a summer river; always with the reserve of the delight of the sad and splendid hues of autumn in the woods.
The aspect under which the river shows to least advantage is that of a bleak, grey day, when a coarse, cold, blusterous wind is blowing loudly.
Like a pretty woman, the fair Thames should never have its surface serenity disfigured by passionate turbulence or wrinkled by debasing anger.
A rough, cruel wind disturbs the characteristics, and distorts the appearance of the pure silver stream.
The gentle, peaceful river should ever be smiling and be calm.
There is less objection to the sullen grandeur of a heavy storm, dark with thunder, squally with rain, while a gust of fierce wind sweeps beneath the sombre cloud-heaps, and lashes up the troubled water.
Yet the Thames should preserve a chaste and delicate quiet.
Sunny stillness, the majesty of soft repose, are its true characteristics.
In brutal, cheerless weather, it looks like a fair face degraded by ignoble pain.
Its sweet essence should not be outraged by vulgar fury.

MONKEY ISLAND

Now, just as we come to Monkey Island, a hush falls upon the sunshine, a soft shade overspreads the heavens; and a summer shower, dinting the glassy surface of the water with dimpling rain-drops, falls gently, and ceases soon.
Shine out, fair sun!
And so it does again, till joy returns with sunlight and with warmth.
“Man’s delight in God’s works” can find rapture in nearly every phase of nature.
Monkey Island is an inn built upon an islet.
It comprises a pavilion erected by the third Duke of Marlborough, in which certain monkeys are cleverly depicted by one Clermont.
We need not land there to-day.

SURLEY

SURLEY.

Our boat floats ever downward with the stream, and we pass Down Place, Oakley, the Fisheries, until we reach Surley Hall, an inn much frequented by Eton boys, who come here for refreshment at that happy age in which it is possible to lunch off olives and toffee.
The river, at this part of it, is not distinctively beautiful.
Soon the channel is bifurcated, one arm, over which is written the ominous warning, “Danger”, leading to the Weir, while the other arm conducts to Boveney Lock.

BOVENEY LOCK

BOVENEY LOCK.

ETON COLLEGE

Once through this lock, and we are in the region of Eton and of Windsor.
Eton is the swimming and rowing school, and we are passing the Brocas and those memorable playing-fields which have trained so many boys into men of mark and leading.
We will halt for just a glimpse of Eton, and will stroll through the picturesque quadrangles of noble fifteenth century brickwork; will glance at the stone chapel; at the hall, library, and masters’ houses; thinking of Henry VI., who, in 1441, founded Eton, after having studied the statutes of William of Wykeham at Winchester.
Eton is no longer a school for indigent scholars, as it was meant to be, and was, when William of Waynflete was its first master.
But we cannot linger long at Eton, and we shall see again the chapel from the North Terrace of Windsor Castle.
Let us re-embark.
Our voyage is nearly over.
Already the landing-place at Windsor; and lo! the great castle towers just above us.

WINDSOR CASTLE

Windsor Castle is the noblest regal pile, the most splendid palace castle in Europe; but it is seen to the best advantage when regarded from a distance, and contemplated in its totality.
Perhaps the grand, irregular castle, which is perched upon a height, looks finest when seen from below; and the towering mass of royal buildings certainly appears at its best when seen from afar.
There is no finer view than that from the river.
Wyattville is credited with some respect for the interior, but his external architecture is wofully bad.
He has made the great quadrangle in the Upper Ward a most dreary thing.
His uniform, conventional Gothic is mean and ugly in the extreme; and Wyattville adopted the hateful system of pointing his stones with black mortar.
For an illustration of the bad effect of this evil work, it is sufficient to compare any of Wyattville’s restored towers with the recently and well-restored Clewer or Curfew tower, in which white mortar is used, so that the stones are not cut off into squares set in black borders.
It were devoutly to be wished that a competent Gothic architect should get rid of the traces of Wyattville’s fatal work.
The cost would be great, but no expense could be too heavy for restoring such an historical building to architectural beauty and value.
On my visit to Windsor—a visit made for the purposes of this article—I had the singular advantage of being conducted over the castle by my friend, Mr. R. R. Holmes, Her Majesty’s librarian.
This courteous and cultured gentleman has in the royal library curious old plans of the castle in various stages of its creation; and no one can speak with more authority about the great palace which Mr. Holmes loves so well and knows so thoroughly.
I cannot too strongly express my gratitude to him for his invaluable assistance, so pleasantly rendered.
It is, of course, impossible in these narrow limits to present any complete picture of Royal Windsor.
Such a subject cannot be exhausted in such an article.
I can only suggest a few points of interest, and merely endeavour to place those readers who may visit the Thames in my wake in a position to obtain some hint and glimpse of part of the romance, at least, of our most royal castle.
Windsor is associated with the records of all the reigns since the Conquest.
Its annals cover the Court life of all the centuries since the Norman came to rule in England.
It is linked with all our history, and old as it is, it is ever young with the glow and poetry of romance. The Saxon kings had a palace at Old Windsor, and Edward the Confessor kept his Court there, but the site of that old royal dwelling cannot now with certainty be determined.
William the Norman moved to New Windsor, but there is nothing visible in the present castle of an earlier date than Henry II.
The ancient entrance, with the sheath of its portcullis plainly visible, shows clear traces of Henry II.’s work.

WINDSOR CASTLE FROM ROMNEY LOCK.

The great royal builders at Windsor whose works follow them, and are still extant, are Henry II., III., Edward III., IV., Henry VII., VIII., and Queen Elizabeth, who was the foundress of the splendid North Terrace.
All Charles II.’s work has been swept away by that Wyattville who did so much disastrous “restoration” for George IV. and William IV.
In Windsor was founded by Edward III., 1348, that noble and royal Order of the Garter which sprang from a king’s chivalrous homage to a pure and lovely lady.
William of Wykeham was, in 1356, surveyor of the king’s works, and dwelt in that Winchester tower which has been so sorely spoiled by Wyattville; and Chaucer, also under Edward III., was “clerk of the repairs” at Windsor.
One loves to fancy the sweet, cheerful old poet riding, on some fair and fresh May morning, through the royal park, while birds were singing and May blooms blossoming, looking lovingly at nature, his lips wreathed with a serene and sunny smile.
Chaucer would, I think, ride gently on an ambling palfrey in preference to backing a mettled steed.
One likes dearly to connect images of Chaucer and of Shakspeare with Windsor Park.

ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR

ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL WINDSOR

The St. George’s Chapel is an ideal chapel for such a palace-castle as Windsor.
It is at once sumptuous and romantic, picturesque and full of colour.
It is a chapel for kings and knights; especially for kings who were also knights and warriors.
It is also the royal chapel for the kingly Order of the Garter.
The Choir is fitted up with the stalls of the members of the Order, and above each stall hang banners, helmets, crests, and swords.
The chapel was built by Edward IV., and was commenced in 1472, the architects being Bishop Beauchamp and Sir Reginald Bray.
All such old ecclesiastical edifices are sacred to the dead as well as precious to the living.
Beneath the feet of those who worship there to-day rests the dust of kings; of those who, in by-past times, worshipped also here while they were in the land of the living. The tomb of the founder, Edward IV., is here; and the chapel covers the graves of Henry VI., Henry VIII., Jane Seymour, and of Charles I.
In 1813 the grave of Charles was opened, and the few who looked upon the remains of the beheaded king could easily recognise the face and form of Charles Stuart.
Every visitor to Windsor is, however, sure to see St. George’s Chapel; and true it is, of this building, “that things seen are mightier than things heard”. We leave our readers to the delight of seeing this poetically regal chapel.

TWO POETIC PRISONERS AT WINDSOR

John, King of France, taken at Crécy, David II. of Scotland, captured at Neville’s Cross, were prisoners of state at Windsor, and were probably immured in the King John’s tower; but the romance of imprisonment in the castle centres round two other figures, to which it seems worth while to devote some little space.
Two romances of chivalry and captivity are intimately connected with Windsor.
One is that of a king, the other that of an earl.
The king is James I. of Scotland, the earl is Surrey.
After the murder, by starvation, of his eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, Robert III. was minded to save and to educate his second son, James, by sending the youth to France.
The Scottish ship was captured by English vessels off Flamborough Head, and the young prince was taken prisoner.
This occurred on the 13th of March, 1405.
King Henry said, “his father was sending him to learn French.
By my troth! he might as well have sent him to me.
I am myself an excellent French scholar, and will see to his instruction”.
And so began a gentle and generous captivity, which was certainly of advantage to the poet king.
The prince was provided with masters, and had every luxury and indulgence.
James was trained in all arts and arms, became a scholar and a cavalier, and benefited by contact with culture and civilisation.

While at Windsor, love came to James in a shape of singular romance and charm, and he lived actually the adventure which Chaucer had devised for his Palamon and Arcite.
The fair Emilie was doing observance to May, and so—

She romid up and down, and as she liste
She gathrith flouris party white and rede,
To make a sotill garlande for her hede;
And as an aungel hevynly she song.

The “grete Tour, that was so thik and strong” was, we hear, “evyne joynaunt to the gardyn wall”; and Emilie was walking and singing in the garden, while the imprisoned Palamon gazed from his high dungeon window in the tower,

And so befell by aventure or caas,
That through a window, thik of many a bar
Of iron grete, and square as any spar,
He cast his eyin on Emilia;
And therewithall he blent, and cryid A!
As though he stongin were unto the herte.

Then Arcite gazes from the same window—

And with that sight her beauty hurt him so,
That, if that Palamon was wounded sore,
Arcit was hurt as much as he, or more.

So far a royal poet’s fancy.
Now take a kingly fact; the fact being also told in song—

Now there was maid fast by the Touris wall
A gardyn faire, and in the corneris set,
Ane herbere greene, with wandis long and small<
Railit about, and so with treeis set
Was all the place, and hawthorne hegis knet.

And therew^t kest I doun myn eye ageyne,
Quhare as I saw walkyng under the toure,
Full secretely, new cumyn hir to pleyne,
The fairest or the freschest zoung floure
That ever I sawe, methot before that houre,
For quhick sodayne abate, anon astert,
The blude of all my bodie to my hert.

And though I stode abaiset tho a lyte,
No wonder was; for quhy? my wittes all
Were so ouercome wt pleasaunce and delyte,
Only through letting of myn eyen fall,
That sudaynly my hert became hir thrall
For ever, of free wyll; for of menace
There was no tokyn in hir suete face.

Then follows a young poet’s lovely and rapturous description of the fair vision, who was, indeed, the Lady Jane, or Johanna Beaufort, daughter of John, Earl of Somerset, and granddaughter of John of Gaunt.
Their loves prospered, as they deserved to do, and James married Lady Jane, at Windsor; the hero of Agincourt being then our king.
James was crowned King of Scotland in 1424, and the lovely lady that he loved so well was his Queen.

In 1437, at the Abbey of Black Friars at Perth, James, who strove in vain to rule his turbulent and brutal nobles, was murdered by Sir Robert Graham; what time the heroic Catherine Douglas tried to bar the door against murder, and had her fair arm broken, while the brave and loving Queen was wounded by the assassins.

Surely this royal love romance may give us sweet and tender fancies as we gaze upon the gardens and the towers of Royal Windsor.
The story is a true Thames episode.

We may glance for a moment at another noble captive in Windsor—at the Earl of Surrey, likewise a poet; and, indeed, the poet who was the first writer of English blank verse.
Impetuous of temper, heady of will, the gallant Surrey developed a lawless ambition which, on the 21st of January, 1547, led him to the Tower block.
He was, says Mr. Robert Bell, “formed out of the best elements of the age, and combined more happily, and with a purer lustre than any of his contemporaries, all the attributes of that compound, and, to us, almost fabulous character, in which the noblest qualities of chivalry were blended with the graces of learning and a cultivated taste.
It might be said of him that he united in his own person the characteristics of Bayard and of Petrarch”; and yet all these fine qualities led only to the scaffold.
Surrey is connected with Windsor because he was educated and spent his youth there, together with the Duke of Richmond, base son of Henry VIII., who married Surrey’s sister; and, further, because, in his day of misfortune, he became a sad prisoner in the castle in which he had spent so many joyous youthful days.
Surrey was contracted when he was sixteen, and was only twenty when he became a father.
He married, in 1535, the Lady Frances Vere, daughter of John, Earl of Oxford; but romance links his name for ever with that of the fair Geraldine, who was the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, and of Margaret, daughter of Thomas Gray, Marquis of Dorset.
Geraldine, when Surrey died at the age of thirty, was but nineteen years of age.
It was the fashion of that day for gallants to wear the sleeve of a mistress of the imagination; and Surrey’s passion for the fair young girl was probably fantastic and partly feigned.
The fair child was an adopted ideal of a knightly poet’s passion.
In the only one of Surrey’s poems in which he speaks openly of her, he says:—

From Tuscane came my lady’s worthy race;
Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat.
The western isle whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Camber’s cliffs, did give her lively heat.
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast:
Her sire an earl; her dame of prince’s blood.
From tender years, in Britain doth she rest,
With kinges child; when she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen;
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine;
Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above;
Happy is he that can obtain her love!

The Lady Elizabeth was one of the ladies in attendance on Mary Tudor, and Surrey probably went with the Duke of Richmond to Hunsdon, there to visit the Lady Mary; and on that visit he first saw Geraldine.
Later, when a captive, Surrey sings—

So cruell prison howe could betide, alas,
As proude Windsor, where I in lust and joye,
With a kinges son my chyldysh years did pass,
In greater feast than Priam’s sonnes of Troy.

The contrast was indeed cruel between Windsor as a palace and Windsor as a prison.
Scott, like a true poet, lays hold of the romance of Surrey’s reputed love for Geraldine, and entrusts to “Fitztraver of the Silver Song” that almost matchless ballad which tells how the wise Cornelius, across the ocean grim, showed to the gallant Surrey the vision of the peerless Geraldine.
Who, asks Walter Scott—

Who has not heard of Surrey’s fame?
His was the hero’s soul of fire,
And his the bard’s immortal name,
And his was love, exalted high<
By all the glow of chivalry

Our fancies are stirred, as we gaze on proud Windsor, by the thought of Surrey.

What a view it is from the round and regal tower, over which, when our loved and honoured Queen is in state residence, floats our “glorious Semper Eadem, the banner of our pride!”
Let us mount with our artist to the summit of the keep.
The view is wide and winsome.
Surely earth has not many things to show more fair, though the prospect is distinguished rather for soft beauty and placid loveliness than for grandeur or for wildness.
I have stood on the summits of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and of many another Alpine peak, and know well that there are outlooks in nature more sublime, more austere, more soul-stirring; but yet this English landscape (which includes twelve fair counties), so peaceful, soft, and smiling, has its own distinctive charm.
The bright river, gleaming in sunlight, winds and stretches far through all the calm scene.
There stand stately English trees; and the view includes broad green meadows, hedgerows, low, gentle hills in the far purple distance.
It is a typical English landscape scene; and then over all there is to-day the splendour of a serene summer sky, and the glory of fantastic, sunlit cloud masses.

I took a great interest in finding out the exact sites of the imprisonment of those two noble and romantic captives who suffered imprisonment here.
Kings John and David were, as we have seen, probably immured in the King John’s tower, which is a prison.
The Round Tower, as Mr. Holmes points out, never was a prison, though a wooden pillar is (if you ask for it) absurdly shown as the one to which Prince James was chained.
The prince chained! Why, his was an honourable and a most gentle captivity.
He was rather guest and pupil than prisoner; and Mr. Holmes leads, with no uncertain step, to a chamber (now used as a bedroom) in the second floor of Edward III.’s tower, which was the room of the prince, and in which is still the window from which the poet-prince looked into the garden—not now existing in its former state—and saw the Lady Jane.
This point may be considered as set at rest: and it is very pleasant to be able to identify James’s chamber, to look out of his window, and to see, with the eye of imagination, the fair sight that he saw in the garden beneath.
Of the place of Surrey’s captivity no record or tradition remains, but the ambitious earl, who strained after the crown, was surely held in more rigid confinement than was James.
Surrey was possibly immured in the King John tower. And now we leave the castle; but before we quit Windsor we will stroll into the park, and try to summon up some fair fancies connected with Shakspeare and with Elizabeth.

SHAKESPEARE AT WINDSOR

It is a charming legend—even if it be only a legend—which tells us that Queen Elizabeth when at Windsor, commanded Shakspeare to write a play in which Falstaff would be shown in love—that is, in such “love” as he was capable of—and that the result of the royal order was the Merry Wives, surely the most genial, and the fullest of human humours, of all comedies.
It seems certain that the first version of this “most pleasaunt and excellent conceited comedie” was written very rapidly, because the second version is so much longer, and differs so widely from the earlier play.
In consequence of the prevalence of the Plague in London, the Court, in 1593, lay long at Windsor, and there can be little doubt that the first version of the play was commissioned and acted at Windsor in that year. It is a delightful theme for the imagination to picture a sunny morning on which the royal cavalcade rode through Windsor Park.
Essex and Southampton were there; and Shakspeare, no doubt, rode, for a time at least, by the bridle of great Elizabeth.
The words then spoken between queen and poet we cannot recall; but as we read the lovable Merry Wives, we enjoy some of the results of the conversation.
So genial is the comedy that even Sir John’s base humours do not excite moral indignation.
He fails so hugely.
Beaten, baffled, and befooled, the merry but honest wives have the laugh of him, and we feel the spirit of the pleasant jest when Mrs. Page proposes to

Laugh this sport o’er by a country fire;
Sir John and all.

We fill in fancy some street in Windsor with those quaint old gabled houses, set in fair gardens, in one of which Master Page, in another Master Ford, lived; and can reconstruct the “Garter” Inn;
[ footnote:
The old "Garter" Inn stood in the High Street, nearly facing the Castle Hill, and adjoining the site of the present "White Hart" Hotel.
"Annals of Windsor" (Tighe & Davis).]
we see the fields near Windsor in which the mock duel does not come off, and we can imagine to ourselves the farmhouse near Frogmore at which pretty Mistress Anne Page was feasting.
We can follow the basket of washing to the “whitsters in Datchet Mead”, and can almost recognise the muddy ditch by the Thames into which the unchaste knight was thrown.
As regards the question whether the date of the play be the time of the wild Prince and Poins, or the contemporary day of great Elizabeth, one little passage makes the point clear.
When Falstaff wants to use the chimney as a hiding-place, Mrs. Page says, that they always use to discharge their birding-pieces up the chimney.
Now, in the days of Henry IV., there were no “birding-pieces”, while the part country gentleman, part opulent burgher of Elizabeth’s time, especially in such a place as Windsor, would possess a fowling-piece.
The old characters of Pistol, Bardolph, Nym, are only used because they seem to be the natural hangers-on of Falstaff; and we may safely assume that we are reading, or seeing, a comedy of manners belonging to Shakspeare’s own day.

Did the Queen, Shakspeare, and the Court ride by that oak of Herne the hunter, who was

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest?

Round that oak, in Windsor Park, occurred the last revenge of the merry wives, after which foul old Sir John is bidden to

Serve God, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you.

We may enjoy a most delightful time of fair fancies in Windsor forest while we think of those

Spirits, which by mine art
I have from their confines call’d to enact
My present fancies;

and the charming crowd of characters in the dear Merry Wives fade like an insubstantial vision, as we unwillingly leave our ramble in the park, and saunter down, with imaginations sweetly and subtly stirred, to our waiting boat.
It is good to leave Windsor with minds filled with creations of our Shakspeare in his sweetest and his gentlest mood.

H. SCHÜTZ WILSON.

PROCESSION OF THE BOATS, ETON.

CHAPTER 7, WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT
by GODFREY WORDSWORTH TURNER

Engraving: Procession of Boats, Eton, Map: Windsor to Hampton Court, Leaving Windsor, Eton, its History and its Worthies, Engraving: Eton from the playing fields, Eton, The College Buildings, Windsor Park, Windsor Park Long Walk, Victoria Bridge, Datchet and Falstaff, Albert Bridge Windsor, Albert Bridge Windsor, Engraving: Old Windsor Lock, Old Windsor Lock, Old Windsor Village, Perdita's Tomb, Old Windsor, Old Windsor Saxon Palace, Old Windsor Tapestry Works, Engraving: The Bells of Ousely, The Bells of Ousely, Wraysbury, Engraving: Magna Carta Island, Magna Carta Island, Engraving: Runnymede, Runnymede, Cooper's Hill, Sir John Denham, Picnic Island, The Angler's Rest, Gudgeon, The Naturalist, Egham, Runnymede Bridge, M25 & A30, Staines Bridge, Engraving: Staines Bridge, Staines & Egham, Engraving: London Stone, London Stone, [Staines Railway Bridge], Staines Deep, Deeps, Staines & Egham Inns, Penton Hook Lock, Engraving: Laleham Ferry, Laleham Ferry, Engraving: Laleham Church, Laleham Church, Engraving: Chertsey Bridge, Chertsey Bridge, Albert Smith & his Brother, Chertsey Abbey, Monastic Fish, Chertsey Abbey Ruins, Cowley at Chertsey, Dickens and Chertsey, Around Chertsey, The River Wey, Weybridge, Oatlands, Oatlands Grotto, Weybridge & the Boating Man, Engraving: Shepperton, Shepperton, Engraving: Shepperton Lock, Shepperton Lock, Halliford, Walton Bridge, Engraving: Halliford, Walton-on-Thames, Cowey Stakes, Walton Church, Engraving: Sunbury Weir, Sunbury, Engraving: Sunbury Church, Sunbury Church, Engraving: Between Sunbury & Hampton, Engraving: Garrick's Villa, Garrick's Villa, Islands near Hampton, Hampton Race Course, Apps Court, [Moulsey Lock], Hampton Court Bridge,

WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT.

LEAVING WINDSOR

The course of the beautiful river as it glides onward from Windsor to Hampton might provoke many a quaint historical conceit, as other rivers have done less aptly.
We drift on the tide of Thames, as on the tide of Time, away from the Norman to the Plantagenet, from the Plantagenet to the Tudor; and it is the life of England that we can scan as the waters flow past scenes which, through all the mutations of the ages, through all the seasons’ difference, year after year, are ever freshly, strongly, characteristically English.
From the Conqueror’s steep-throned stronghold; past the ait and meadow associated deathlessly with the solemn declaration that “no freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed”—“nor condemned, nor committed, to prison excepting by the legal judgment of his peers or by the laws of the land”; past more than one memorial of the mild king whose piety and love of learning founded Eton College; and still onward, far onward, along the fluvial current of history, till we reach the stately and substantial record of another and a later Henry, last of that royal name, and opposite in all respects of character, temperament, and will to the weak and gentle Plantagenet.
From Windsor, then, and from Eton’s distant spires; from the playing-fields, the bathing-places, the Brocas, and Firework Eyot; from the fisheries, too, which exist on the same spots they occupied eight hundred years ago—for wherever a fishery or a mill is named in Domesday Book, there it will generally be found, as of yore—we turn reluctantly, and not until a lingering look has been cast back on the old familiar scenes.
Our way is on the river, or by its side, the towing-path being a track which pedestrians may follow with pleasant ease.
But here and there the land may win us astray; and at the very commencement of our jaunt there is more to interest us ashore than afloat.
Not that the river hereabout lessens in charm.
On the contrary, its winding beauty is almost at its height.
But that very beauty half depends on prospects which lead our thoughts inland; and inland we must consent, therefore, to be led.

ETON COLLEGE, ITS HISTORY AND ITS WORTHIES

Eton is a well-worn theme—but can never be outworn! The Royal College of the Blessed Virgin, whose assumption is depicted in the centre of the collegiate seal, was founded in the year 1440, after Henry’s visit to Winchester, whence came Eton’s first head-master, William of Waynflete.
“It was high time”, says Fuller, “some school should be founded, considering how low grammar-learning then ran in the land”. The original endowments were for “ten sad priests, four lay clerks, six choristers, twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor men to pray for the king”. There are now on the foundation a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, three conducts, seventy king’s scholars, ten clerks, and twelve choristers.
Beside these, there are above seven hundred scholars—Oppidans—who are not on the foundation. One of the masters of Eton College is illustrious through all time in which the English language is studied, as the writer of our earliest comedy, or the earliest which has come down intact to modern days. Not later than 1551, as critics and scholars are mostly agreed, did Nicholas Udall write his “Ralph Roister-Doister”, which, in plot and dialogue, is immensely superior to John Still’s “Gammer Gurton’s Needle”, supposed to have been written a few years—perhaps as many as fourteen—afterwards.
The greatest of literary rarities in the library of Eton College is a copy of Master Nicholas Udall’s right merry conceit, which is divided, in what would be considered as modern orthodox form, into five acts; is constructed with comic art of uncommon excellence; contains thirteen characters, some of them powerfully and distinctly marked; and exhibits the manners of the middle order of people at that day, the scene being laid in London.
All that we can reasonably guess concerning Nicholas Udall as a teacher of youth is, that he was one to help in setting that early example of severity which was long afterwards followed as a sacred tradition of public-school custom and discipline.
Perhaps he had, according to custom of his time, a whipping-boy, or puerile scapegoat, to take on his back the sins of happier pupils.
But it is more likely that Master Udall swished without favour all round.
Thomas Tusser, who wrote the didactic poem, “Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandrie”, was one of Udall’s scholars, and gives hard report of him as a most exacting master.
It is somewhat remarkable that the first two writers of comic drama in the language should both have been schoolmasters.

John Still, author of the piece of low rustic humour before mentioned, of which the dramatic point is that of the needle itself, found by Gammer Gurton’s man, Hodge, in a manner equally startling and climacteric, was master of St. John’s and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and afterwards Chancellor of the University, and Bishop of Bath and Wells.
One of the best things in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is a song, the well-known—

I cannot eat but little meat.

Professor Craik was inclined to opinion that “Ralph Roister-Doister” was the later of the two “farcical comedies”, as they would now be called.

Men of the world, active in social affairs, as well as clerkly and diligent in the conduct of the school, were some of the earlier provosts and masters.
Roger Lupton, whose rebus, the uncouth syllable, LUP, surmounting a tun, is carved over the door of the little chantry which contains his tomb, built the great tower and gateway, when he was provost in Henry VII.’s time and later.
Sir Thomas Smith was a Secretary of State and a well-known diplomatist in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth.
Sir Henry Wotton was conspicuous both as a writer and a statesman, having been an ambassador of James I.; nor is it necessary to say that as an angler he was the companion of Izaak Walton, by whom he was beloved and praised, notably as an “undervaluer of money”. Francis Rouse, Speaker of the Barebones Parliament, saved Eton from confiscation, and founded three scholarships.
All these men might have been famed in other paths than those of learning had they never seen the college they influenced and benefited.
Other illustrious provosts and head-masters, though not so versatile as to have influenced worldly affairs and the state of the nation in any direct way, or to have written freely and jovially for the “inglorious stage”, have left a mark on their time which is more than merely scholastic.
Such were Sir Henry Savile, reader to Queen Elizabeth, and one of the greatest scholars of her learned reign; Thomas Murray, tutor and secretary to Prince Charles; Dr. Steward, clerk of the closet to that prince after his accession to the throne; Nicholas Monk, brother of the Duke of Albemarle, and sometime Bishop of Hereford; Richard Allestree, Canon of Christchurch, who built the Upper School; and the late Dr. Hawtrey, famed for his elegant scholarship as well as for his success as head-master.
The “ever memorable” John Hales (whose name, brilliant at one time as that of a keen theological controversialist, might in this age be forgotten but for Milton’s well-known sonnet), Bishop Pearson, Bishop Fleetwood, Earl Camden, Dean Stanhope, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir William Draper, and Archbishop Longley were all, as boys, on the foundation of Eton College; and other celebrities educated there—some of their names carved on the old wainscoting—were Edmund Waller, Harley, Earl of Oxford, Lord Bolingbroke, the great Earl of Chatham, Lord Lyttelton, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, Wyndham, Fox, Canning, Henry Fielding, Admiral Lord Howe, the Marquis Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, and Henry Hallam.

ETON, FROM THE PLAYING-FIELDS.

ETON, THE COLLEGE BUILDINGS

In the notes to Collier’s map of Windsor, published in 1742, an etymology is assigned to Eton which is not clearly demonstrated, if, indeed, it be demonstrable.
“Eton”, we read, “is so called from its low situation among the waters; for Eton is the same as Watertown, but, as they are running waters, and it is a gravelly soil, it is observed that no place is more healthy than this”. Few buildings, indeed, are more happily situated than this venerable pile of old red-brown brick and Caen stone, marked by the characteristic architecture of three centuries.
The old part of the college, begun in 1441 and finished in 1523, consists of two quadrangles, in one of which are the chapel and school, with the dormitories of the foundation-scholars, while the other contains the library, provost’s house, and lodgings of the fellows.
It is, of course, the chapel—a fine example of early Perpendicular, resembling in outline King’s College Chapel, at Cambridge—that gives dignity and distinction to all pictures of the place, from whichsoever point you take your view.
The spires of this beautiful structure are those which “crown the watery glade”, and are conspicuous above the quaint turrets of the surrounding buildings seen from afar.
Many are the views of Eton which are commended, each as being the best, by different persons.
The curving railway-run from Slough gives a continuous succession of changes not to be despised; but undoubtedly the riverside is best.
Gray’s distant prospect was from the north terrace of Windsor Castle.
Mr. David Law chose Romney Island for his standpoint when he made the sketch for one of his finest etchings.
But in truth the buildings group well everywhere, as they are seen from a distance; the crowning glory being always the pinnacled chapel.
It is scarcely to be doubted that Henry VI., who laid the first stone lovingly, and with meek emulation of the noble foundations of William of Wykeham, at Winchester and Oxford, in his mind intended that the structure, perfect as it now appears, should form only the choir of a magnificent collegiate church.
To the beautiful building, as we see it, he would have added a nave and aisles, grandly vaulted, as the strength of the buttresses sufficiently indicates the chapel itself was meant to be.
But the troublous years that closed his reign prevented the fulfilment of those designs; and it was left for the present century to bring the interior more worthily into accord with so fair an outside.
Bird’s bronze statue of the royal founder, erected by Provost Godolphin, in 1719, stands in the centre of one of the quadrangles.
There is a look of cheerful gravity in the brick fronts of the college buildings.
The elaborate quaintness of the chimneys, the sedate solidity, whether of plainness or of ornament, give a pleasant character to these quadrangles, in the larger of which, containing the bronze statue of Henry VI., is as picturesque a clock-tower as any architect in soul might wish to see.
Here, on the opposite side, the hand of Sir Christopher Wren is denoted in the fine arcade supporting the Upper School.
The second and smaller quadrangle, called the Green Yard, is surrounded by a cloister, and in it is the entrance to the Hall, a curious apartment, with a daïs, and with three fireplaces, which were long panelled in and lost to memory.

But we must not lose ourselves too long within the College and its precincts, lest the attractions of the library, the provost’s lodgings, the election-hall, and the new buildings erected in the Tudor style, make us oblivious to our riverside ramble.
It is on the stream itself, and on well-known spots along its banks, that Eton manifests her vigorous training in various traditionary ways.
The river is constantly covered with boats, and its proximity to the College has given Etonians that proficiency in swimming and rowing of which they are justly proud, and which they maintain by practice and prize-giving.
Chief among the bathing-places of note is Athens, with its Acropolis, famed for “headers”. On the Fourth of June, now the Speech Day, loyally instituted in celebration of the birthday of King George III., a procession of boats from the Brocas to Surley Hall is the event of the afternoon; and the evening closes with a display of fireworks.
There are many old Etonians whose memory goes back to the Montem, abolished forty years ago.
It was a triennial celebration, held on Whit Tuesday, and has been the subject of many a picturesque description, not the least vivid and truthful of which was a dramatic sketch by Maria Edgeworth, intended, like other of her charming essays and tales, such, for example, as “Barring-Out”, for the delectation of youth.
Eton Montem partook somewhat too strongly of the old saturnalian character for modern tastes; and it was at the instance of a head-master that the old custom was discontinued, not without aid from Government and opposition from young and old Etonians.
The last Montem, in 1846, was conducted with such maimed rites as to be a mere shadow of olden heartiness and gaiety; but in its jolliest days, which were in the reign of “Farmer George”, there was no doubt something really salient in the mock-ceremony on Salt Hill.
It was “for the honour of the college” that the boys, handsomely and expensively dressed in various fancy costumes, levied contributions on all and sundry passengers along the Bath Road, past the mound, believed to be an ancient tumulus, which bore the name already mentioned.
The money called Salt was gathered for the captain or senior boy to defray his expenses at Cambridge, whither he was going as king’s scholar.
When Henry VI. resolved on founding a college at Eton, he incorporated two small colleges or hostels at Cambridge, one of which he had instituted two years before.
Thus originated King’s College, to which, as Lambarde says, “Eton sendeth forth her ripest fruit”. The scholars are required by the statute to be “indigentes”, but of course this provision has long been a dead letter.

To take farewell of the College of Eton is usually to take farewell of the town, in which, as guide-books say, there is little interest; though, forsooth, interest may be wanting where we may find pleasure of the less exciting kind, not soon to die away.
At least, there is in Eton unaffected substantiality of old-fashioned building, taking the form of its own age, and not stealing outward conceits from any other. Some of the houses of professional persons and private inhabitants, tutors and others, opposite the College, with its chestnut-trees, are staid, and even venerable.
As Dickens said of the old unspoilt pier at Broadstairs, they have “no pretensions to architecture”, and are “immensely picturesque in consequence”. Hereabout is the well-stored shop of the librarian and publisher, never lacking custom in term-time. Eton College has its literary “organ”, and lives in hope of a Canning to immortalise pages which meanwhile are not deficient in sense and style, as how, indeed, should they be? In this publication are duly chronicled events which now are scarcely eventful, but which will make history some of these days.
The doings in playground and on river, at football and cricket, rowing, swimming, and diving, are here registered, to the satisfaction of “wet bobs” and “dry bobs,” as the boys whose varying athletic tastes lead them in different directions are called.
There is no house of public entertainment in Eton which is distinguished by the modernised term, hotel; but there are some decent inns, the most comfortable of which is reported to be the “Christopher”. It is a direct continuation of Eton into Windsor across the bridge connecting the Berkshire with the Buckinghamshire town, the town being to all intents and purposes one.

WINDSOR PARK

Windsor Great Park—thus designated in distinction from the Home Park of 500 acres, which adjoins the Castle, and is the enclosure which contained Herne’s Oak—should now be seen.
It is separated from the castle precincts by the high road, and by part of Windsor.
Apportioned here and there to farms, it still comprises a clear area little short of 2,000 acres, forest-like in much of its scenery, and abounding in walks and drives, from which a herd of deer is a frequent addition to the regal beauty of the prospect.
When, for purpose of ridicule and burlesque, the title Duke of Shoreditch finds its way into modern literature, it may be called to mind that the first man so dubbed was a Londoner named Barlow, who, at one of the great archery meetings held by Henry VIII. so excelled all the Buckinghamshire yeoman, that his Majesty forthwith gave him, half in pique, half in pleasantry, the mock style and honour.

WINDSOR PARK LONG WALK

For three miles the Great Park is traversed by the elm-bordered avenue called the Long Walk, at the far end of which, set up high on an eminence known as Snow Hill, stands a colossal equestrian statue in lead, by Westmacott, of George III., in classic costume.
The fine perspective, with its countless noble trees, was planned by Charles II., and finished under William III.
Only by accident, fortunate or unfortunate we hesitate to say, was it that the quaintly beautiful gate, built at Whitehall by Holbein, “with bricks of two colours, glazed, and disposed in a tesselated fashion,”
[ Original footnote: Pennant's "History of London". ]
and taken down in 1759, did not take the place now occupied by the leaden statue of George III.
The materials of the Tudor gate, carefully preserved, were brought hither by the Duke of Cumberland, with an intention which was frustrated by his mortal sickness.
It was as well, after all, that a civic gate was not set up in a sylvan park, however stately. Transplanted monuments seldom, if ever, find congenial surroundings. The Duke of Devonshire, in quite recent years, declined the offer of the fine water-gate of York House, built for Duke Steenie by Inigo Jones; and there it stands to this day, elbowed into obscurity by the Thames Embankment.
No Cavendish was ever yet so wanting in a sense of the fitness of things as not to feel that a river edifice, designed as a point of landing and embarking, would be out of place as a portal of a mansion in Piccadilly.
Wherever Temple Bar may be erected, it will be an incongruity and an anachronism, serving only to turn men’s minds fretfully to the incongruous pile of maimed heraldry, portrait-sculpture, allegorical confusion, and vulgar commonplace, in stone and bronze, built up by Mr. Jones—Horace, not Inigo—in the middle of the road over against the Law Courts.
Not as completed according to its original plan does the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park now appear.
It was a walk, and nothing more, for Charles II. was a pedestrian.
And as a walk it remained till 1710, at which time the carriage-road down the avenue was constructed, a new footpath having meanwhile been made for Queen Anne, which to this day retains its old title, the Queen’s Walk.
Royal residences and olden sites, and monuments relating to royalty, distinguish Windsor Park and its neighbourhood.

[ Victoria Bridge ]

[ The furthest upstream of the two 'royal' bridges in Windsor Park ]

DATCHET & FALSTAFF

Our way now lies past Frogmore, and over the river again, by the Albert Bridge, to Southley, where we set our faces up-stream, going back a little on our course to visit Datchet.
Another iron bridge, higher up—named the Victoria Bridge—would have taken us thither more directly; though we must then have missed the park and its scenic associations.
But if it were only to see the Datchet of Shakespeare, the Datchet lane, and Datchet mead by which Ford’s men carried Falstaff to the river brink in the buck-basket, and there canted him into the water with the foul linen, we could as well have remained on the Berkshire shore.
There might, indeed, have been a wooden bridge between Windsor and Datchet in Elizabethan days; but it is most likely that the name of Datchet, bridge or no bridge, applied to spots on both sides the river, and that Datchet Mead was a piece of low land between Windsor Home Park and the river.
As such, it is mentioned by Mrs. S. C. Hall, who agrees with other writers in supposing that Falstaff and the foul linen were tilted, according to Mistress Ford’s injunctions, into the muddy ditch among the whitsters, close to Thames side.
But Falstaff, both in his soliloquy at the “Garter” Inn, and in the account of the affair to “Master Brook”, distinctly says he was thrown into Thames, the shelving shore of which river saved him from drowning.
The real Datchet on the Buckinghamshire side could not have been intended by Shakespeare, unless, by a poetical licence, he brought Datchet over to Windsor.
The topographers and the Shakespearean annotators alike have been content to slur this point, leaving their readers to reconcile the doubts concerning which all modern authorities, or such as ought to be authorities, are silent.
The nearest elucidation is yet afar off.
We find it in a note by Malone on Dennis, who had objected to the probability of the circumstance of Falstaff’s having been carried to Datchet Mead, “which”, says Dennis, “is half a mile from Windsor”. This would refer, certainly, to a mead on the Berkshire side, and not in the parish of Datchet, in a county separated by the Thames.
Mrs. Hall was doubtless right in placing Datchet Mead between the towing-path and Windsor Little Park; but it is a pity she was not more explicit.
The muddy ditch named by Mistress Ford in the play was probably that which, being covered over in Queen Anne’s time, was used as a drain, and came to be called Hog Hole.
It was destroyed when the embankment was raised to form a foundation for the Windsor side of Victoria Bridge.
Both from this bridge and from its fellow, lower down, good views are obtained of Windsor Castle.
At Datchet, no longer so pretty and picturesque as it was half a century ago, is an old church of Early English and Decorated styles, in which Queen Elizabeth’s printer, Christopher Barber, is buried; as also Lady Katherine Berkeley, daughter of Lord Mountjoy.
Above Datchet, Izaak Walton used to fish, sometimes with his friend, Sir Henry Wotton, the provost of Eton before mentioned.

THE ALBERT BRIDGE

THE ALBERT BRIDGE, WINDSOR.

Albert Bridge, with its long, flattened, Tudor arch, spanning the river at one bound, bears a miniature resemblance to the design of the bridge at Westminster, and is light and elegant, though of a modern taste, which lacks the picturesqueness and simplicity of the old objects on the river.
The span, however, adds safety to the navigation, especially in these times of steam-launches, the most unpopular and best-hated craft on the Thames.
Like other ills, we have come to tolerate them for a certain one-sided convenience, esteemed by the selfish, the lazy, and the fast.
All pleasant quiet on the river, as, indeed, on the shore, is a thing of long ago.
Idlesse, dreamy solitude, could only be enjoyed by the few, and can never be enjoyed by them.
In coupling, or rather in identifying the fast and the lazy, we may, by hasty thinkers, be suspected of a contradiction.
There is none in what we have said.
The lazy are often restless in their inert desire to be conveyed swiftly from place to place; for they have no energy for idling.
To rush, screaming on, with their hands in their pockets, and no motion of their own, is the height of bliss to such people, and this is the enjoyment a steam-launch affords.
Yet the unpopular vessel has a popularity of its own.
Riverside folk in the mass, from the Duke of Westminster to the poorest toiler who profits by the Early-closing Movement and the Bank-holidays, all join in decrying the rowdy intruder—the “’Arry” of river craft.
But “’Arry” is all-pervading, and multiplies himself with astonishing exuberance and rapidity.
There is more of him every day; and there are more and more steam-launches, for all the outcry against them.

OLD WINDSOR LOCK

OLD WINDSOR LOCK.

OLD WINDSOR VILLAGE

Old Windsor, whatever may have been the state to which it attained when young or middle-aged, is now only a village, and not, so far as appearances go, a very old one.
Like the schoolboy’s knife, which had first a new blade, then a new spring, then another new blade, and then a new handle, it has been transformed by successive renewings.
It is by a new road from New Windsor that this Old Windsor, which is much the newer of the two, is reached.
We pass the Prince Consort’s model farm to get at the one bit of antiquity.
This is the church.
It is very picturesque, and derives a certain venerable suggestiveness from the yews and other old trees surrounding it.
But it is not of remarkably early date; and restorations have robbed it of more age than it could well afford to lose.
Trees are the best friends that Old Windsor can boast.
They keep it warm and green and comely.
The by-road leading to the church is not often trodden, except by those who really deserve the name of church-goers.
It is not a show-place; that is one thing in its favour.
It has a green and tranquil churchyard; that is another.

PERDITA'S TOMB

The name best known to people who have read the modern history of Old Windsor Church is a whispered name; the tomb which bears it is a neglected tomb; few go out of their way to pace that little cemetery; fewer still find the grave of Mary Robinson.
Hush! it is a name that the kind will be kindest to forget.
No loving care kept the tomb from being overgrown with nettles for fifty years; and it is too late now, even were it seemly, to vex the ghost of poor “Perdita”. That was the lady’s romantic designation.
She had played the character in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.
There was a Prince Florizel who wore a chestnut wig, a frogged and fur-collared frock-coat, tight breeches, and silk stockings, and cut a very elegant figure on the throne of England—“George the Magnificent”, he is called by Mr. Thackeray.
He invented a new shoe-buckle.
It was five inches broad, covering almost the whole instep, and reaching down to the ground on either side of the foot.
“A sweet invention!” exclaims the satirist.
And a pretty Prince Florizel, truly, whose head was so full of such matters as these, and whose heart was so choked with egregious vanity that, having “kissed and fondled poor Perdita on Monday, he met her on Tuesday and did not know her”. She sleeps, now, peacefully in the tree-shaded churchyard of Old Windsor—she and her daughter, Maria Elizabeth Robinson, both of literary fame, the inscriptions tell.
What did they write? Poetry, was it? There is a tombstone also here to the memory of a shepherd, named Thomas Pope, who died half a century ago, aged ninety-six, having been “cheerfully laborious to an advanced age”. On the same stone is recorded the death of “Phoebe, wife of the above”, aged ninety years. Their fame was not literary, nor their work of the poetical kind.
Their bodies, nevertheless, are buried in peace, and their names, merged, it may be, in “the long pedigree of toil”, live for evermore.

OLD WINDSOR SAXON PALACE

But though Old Windsor is reduced to an insignificant suburb of New Windsor, it was the royal dwelling-place when all was forest around, and when the solitary chalk hill, standing up from a tree-covered clay tract on the riverside, was uncrowned by feudal masonry.
That was before the Norman took hold upon England.
At the Conquest, Old Windsor was a manor belonging to the Saxon kings, who are conjectured to have had a palace here from a very early period.
We may fancy theirs to have been a less splendid court than that of “George the Magnificent”. When Edward the Confessor—who afterwards presented the manor to his newly-founded monastery of Westminster—ruled England from this spot, a few serfs and swineherds dwelt sparsely in huts among the thick woods. The site of the Saxon palace can only be guessed; but antiquaries have surmised that an old farmhouse which stood west of the church, and near the river, surrounded by a moat, probably marked the place.
When the Conqueror, having obtained the land from the monastery, by fair bargain, as appears, built a fortress on the eminence which we now call Castle Hill, the palace at Old Windsor remained a palace.
It is probable that the first Norman castle on the neighbouring mound was simply a defensive work, with no convenient residence, till Henry I. completed additional buildings.
Thenceforth Windsor Castle was Windsor Castle indeed; and little is heard in history of Old Windsor.
The manor passed from hand to hand, each tenant for a time holding from the king by service.
One man, with lance and dart, for the royal army, was all required.
Since the fourteenth century, the holding has been on lease from the Crown.

OLD WINDSOR TAPESTRY WORKS

Tapestry works, which of old were maintained at Windsor, and fell into disuse, have in late years been revived.
Looms were set up in buildings specially adapted to the industry, which was initiated by foreign workmen, the art of tapestry-weaving in England having quite died out.
One of the artists engaged in supplying designs was the late Mr. E. M. Ward, R.A., and the application of the modern tapestries to household decoration was mainly encouraged by Messrs. Gillow and Company, who have employed these hangings with great effect in the royal pavilion, each succeeding year, at the South Kensington exhibitions.
Keen interest in the revival of this artistic and dignified class of manufacture was taken by the late Duke of Albany, under whose patronage an exhibition in furtherance of the scheme was held in Windsor Town Hall.
An early and munificent encourager of the work was Mr. Christopher Sykes, M.P., whose town mansion was richly adorned with the Windsor tapestries.

"THE BELLS OF OUSELY"

THE “BELLS OF OUSELEY”.

No traveller bids farewell to Old Windsor without paying his respects to one of the best of the riverside taverns, the time-honoured “Bells of Ouseley”. Perfectly free, at present, from modern revivalism, and from all manner of conscious style, is this genuine old inn, separated by the high road from the river bank.
Its quaint bow-windows, one on either side of a porch entered by way of a steep flight of steps—the wholesome dread of unsteady topers—are just of the period and fashion to captivate an artist in search of the picturesque; nor can we look on this unspoilt hostelry without thinking of Mr. Leslie, Mr. Boughton, or Mr. Tissot.
In France, a village cabaret or auberge, humbler than this, would yet be far more advanced in the art of public entertainment.
“They cook very well at these places”, is a remark you frequently hear in Normandy, Picardy, or Champagne, from the lips of culinary judges, versed in all the intricacies of Parisian gastronomy; and if the unpretending inn be near a trout-stream, be sure you may have a dish fit for a prince, and within the means of a woodcutter. Were some enterprising cook to lease a cosy tavern like the “Bells of Ouseley”, and introduce a really high-class cuisine on a choice but simple scale, the place would be talked about in a month and spoiled in a year, at the end of which time the proprietor might be either a rich man or a bankrupt.
Let us take our pretty, rustic riverside resort, for rest and refreshment, as we find it.
Fine cookery would drive out honest companions whom old Izaak—who had a face like an elderly pike, but was a right good fellow for all that—would have drawn into profitable talk; for at the “Bells of Ouseley” you meet anglers and bargemen from whom much is to be learnt, if you go the right way to get hold of them.
On the left as you enter is the tap, often crowded; on the right a bar-parlour, in which the company is more select.
Of old the “Bells” had the reputation of being a house of call for “minions of the moon”, as Falstaff called them, or “knights of the road”, to choose a later phrase, such as the authors of “Paul Clifford” and “Rookwood” would have applied to the same order of gentry.
But the landlord does not, in these days, give stall and fodder to nags of suspicious character, like bonny Black Bess.
The old stone stable is oftener occupied by steeds that consume neither oats nor hay; and the highwaymen are not such as wear crape over their faces, or carry pistols like demi-culverins, or dance minuets with ladies they have plundered, but are in fact only members of a bicycle club.
Under that old roof with its odd chimneys, standing against a background of greenery, there are jolly ghosts, you may be sure; for the grimmer goblins that have haunted the “Bells” in time when gibbets were plentiful, and when every one of these evil trees bore its rotting fruit, that swung and creaked in the night-wind, were laid long ago in a red sea of steaming punch, by boon companions of those who, as the phrase was, “suffered”.
The fishing at the “Bells” is good.
Capital chub and dace are taken with the fly, and gudgeon are plentiful as blackberries.

WRAYSBURY

On the Bucks shore, above the outfall of the little River Colne, which flows into the broader Thames, below Bell Weir Lock, is Wraysbury, a name which has been conveniently adapted to local phonetics from “Wyrardisbury”. Over the Colne there is a suspension-bridge; and the river is crossed by the South-Western Railway, which has a station here.
Wraysbury Church is distinguishable under its restorations, which appear to have followed in good faith the original design, as a fair example of Early English architecture.
It preserves one of those rarities of monumental design of which so largely outnumbering a proportion of village churches have been robbed.
This is the brass which represents, in the habit of an Eton scholar at the beginning of the sixteenth century, John Stonor, who is not the only recorded association of this place with the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is Ankerwyke House, a modern mansion, embowered in trees, by the riverside.
It occupies the site of a Benedictine priory, which, in its later days of dissolution, was given as a residence, by Edward VI., to a provost of Eton, Sir Thomas Smith.
This priory, for nuns of the above-named order, was founded in the reign of Henry II., by Sir Gilbert Montfichet.
Of the old religious buildings hardly a trace remains.
Ankerwyke House is associated by tradition with the courtship of Anne Boleyn by Henry VIII., who used, it is said, to meet her under a yew-tree, which has since grown to the goodly girth of twenty-eight feet.
Great trees of this kind have an exceedingly venerable look, but as a matter of fact their age seldom comes near comparison with that of the oak; and a yew-tree pretending to the age of three hundred and fifty years and more may be looked upon with doubt, at least as reasonable as the scepticism of a Thom or a Cornewall Lewis, directed to the subject of human longevity.
Wraysbury is rather a pretty village than otherwise, and we leave it with a wish that it may be spared any loss of its present prettiness for many years to come.

MAGNA CARTA ISLAND

MAGNA CHARTA ISLAND.

An unspoiled path leads to the ferry, by which Magna Charta Island is reached, the lower of two islets in midstream.
Topography is at loggerheads as to whether, the barons holding the island, this was the place of meeting between them and King John, or the field named Runnymede was the spot on which the grant of English freedom was signed.
Anglo-Saxon authorities derive the name from Rûn, and say that Runnymede means Council Meadow.
So that the island and the field on the Surrey shore—for we stepped across the boundary of Berks when we bade farewell to Old Windsor—hold the great historical honour in dispute. We should certainly incline to a decision in favour of the island.
It was on the plain level field, such as we now see it, unbroken by hedge or wall, house or barn, that Edward the Confessor no doubt occasionally held his “witan”, during his residence at Old Windsor.
The Norman barons would have been likely to choose the island, both on account of its association with those very rights they were met to assert, and because it was at a convenient distance from Windsor, sufficiently near for the king, but far enough to prevent any treacherous surprise by his forces.
It is, indeed, asserted by early historians that the island opposite the meadow was chosen by the barons, the king having proposed Windsor as the place of meeting.
Local tradition, which may be taken for what it is worth, accords with written history.
The Charter bears date June 15, 1215; and in that very year John had taken refuge in Windsor Castle, as a place of security against the growing power of the barons.
On Magna Charta Island a Gothic cottage has been built by one of the Harcourts, lords of the manor, as an altar-house for a large rough stone, which bears an inscription setting forth that King John signed Magna Charta on that island.
Tradition or fancy goes a step farther, and represents the stone to have been the royal writing-desk.

RUNNYMEDE

RUNNYMEDE

COOPER'S HILL, SIR JOHN DENHAM

From Runnymede the slopes of Cooper’s Hill rise, on which Sir John Denham conferred celebrity, if, indeed, Cooper’s Hill did not the rather confer celebrity on him.
It is certain that his poem, which disputes the palm of descriptive verse with Ben Jonson’s lines on Penshurst, is far better known than anything else he ever wrote.
No one thinks of naming Denham without quoting those four lines which Dryden and Pope have lauded, and which remain to the taste of a changed epoch “the exact standard of good writing”. Many critics, so to speak, have taken off their hats to the quotation, and have printed it usually in admiring italics.
Addressing Thames, the poet says:—

O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o’erflowing, full.

Reflective power, almost equal to Wordsworth’s, characterised the poetry of Denham; but he can hardly be compared to the modern poet in the quality of description.
If he has drawn a pretty good likeness of the river, which does, however, occasionally overflow, and at other times is by no means full, surely the hill is unrecognisable in such portraiture as this:—

But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that’s high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is placed,
Between the mountain and the stream embraced,
Which shade and shelter from the hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives.

Over Denham’s gorgeous clouds of fancy, clothing the sides of this Thamesian mountain, some pretty villas, with lawns and gardens, are dotted among the trees, with which Cooper’s Hill is beautifully planted.
Its gentle slopes, green and gradual, scarcely attain steepness at any point; and the wild hyperbole which makes the airy mountain hide his proud head in the clouds is absurdly misleading.
The view from its summit is wide and fair; and the silver windings of the river towards Windsor Castle, which stands up in its pride of strength, are finely shown on the face of the landscape; and if Denham lost himself in picturing a hill, he is at home again in his representation of a plain.
Runnymede, as fair a pasture as it was seven hundred years ago, is still unbroken, still sheltered by the hill and enriched by the river.
An army might assemble there, as in the feudal days of old.

[ It occurs to me that an army has assembled there - they have bought all the places with views and surrounded them with lovely trees - to the point that there are no public viewpoints at all - effectively (except for the privileged few) the view from Cooper's Hill is no more! ]

PICNIC ISLAND

Bell Weir, and the Picnic, as the island a little above Runnymede is called, are favourite resorts of holiday-makers, anglers among others; and no more delightful part of the river for rest and recreation, as well as for sport, can be found than in the beautiful reaches which succeed one another as the stream winds, now this way, now that, between banks that never lose their charm of interest and variety. On the Picnic, however, picnics are ceasing or have ceased.
Liberty, so cheerfully accorded, has, with too many picnic-parties, been turned to licence, and permission to use the island for such kind of pleasure-making had at last to be stopped.
If the bold Briton can be brought to see the gracelessness of accepting a grace, and then abusing it, perhaps there may be a renewal, in time, of the concession.

THE ANGLER'S REST

Close to the weir, on the Surrey side of the river, is an excellent inn, aptly, though it may be tritely, called the “Angler’s Rest”.
Barbel, roach, club, and gudgeon are plentiful round the Bell Weir; and trout are often taken.

GUDGEON

Thames gudgeon run somewhat small, and anglers who do not combine culinary taste and skill with their proficiency in the craft are apt to regard the little fish as no more than a good sort of live-bait.
And this, indeed, he is, especially if you are pike-fishing.
Arthur Smith, the amiable brother of Albert, who thought a pike, stuffed and baked, very good eating, knew the partiality of this voracious fish for gudgeon.
Indeed, Master Jack, who is both a gourmand and a gourmet—the characters being oftener united than is commonly supposed—will pass by any other prey to get at the silver morsel, which has been called by some human epicures the freshwater smelt.
So, by-the-by, will a perch, the only fish that can live with pike on terms of armed neutrality or amicable defiance.
Freshwater smelt, indeed!
Why, the despised gudgeon, properly cleansed and treated with salt, is, when freshly caught and delicately fried, the smelt’s decided superior; and it is perfectly surprising that the former is not more in request—is never asked for, in fact—at London restaurants.
Yet, in Paris, at Bignon’s, Champeaux’, the Café Anglais, the Café de la Paix, the Maison Doré, or at the Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne, or at the Tête Noir at St. Cloud, no judicious diner misses goujon, when that fish is to be had, as it generally is.
Why must we wait till we go abroad before we think of asking for gudgeon?
Why should we pooh-pooh the dainty little fellow?
Is it because it is so easy to catch him that his very name has passed into a proverb?
Depend upon it, in spite of the ridicule which follows gudgeon-fishing as the facile entertainment of “a young angler”, we make a great mistake, and lose many a dainty dish, in this scornful, or at least jocular, disregard of so sweet and delicate a fish.
Gudgeons swim in shoals, are always greedy biters, and, in fact, hook themselves with so charming and ready a will, that ladies and boys have no greater trouble than pulling them out of the water as soon as the hook, baited with a red worm, is dropped into it.
No other labour, and no skill or activity beyond, is needed.
The hook must be small, and the worm must be small also; and the gravelly bottom should be raked, to stir up the aquatic insects and larvæ, and so to summon the confiding fish together.

THE NATURALIST

Angling and rowing are not the only pursuits on the river or by its banks.
The student of natural history and the landscape-painter, by which, in these days, is mostly meant the same, may botanise to their hearts’ content; and, if they care more for popular and poetic than for scientific botany, may be glad to find there are still such beings as country folk, and still such names for flowering plants as codlings-and-cream, which the vulgar call Epilobium hirsutum.
Call it what you will, this same plant, which is in truth the large-flowered willow-herb, and has a wholesome, but not very distinct or pungent odour, supposed to resemble the scent of apples with cream, as above named, is liked by cattle, and was at one time recommended for cultivation as fodder in wet places where other useful plants will not grow.
The true forget-me-not—the Vergiss-mein-nicht of the German tale—grows in extraordinary luxuriance and beauty in these fresh grassy places.
An amphibious little weed, with red-shaded green leaves floating on the water, and with pink spike-blossoms, called the persicaria, is beautiful and harmless when dancing on the rippled recesses of the river, but a bane to farming when it takes to a life on shore.

EGHAM

We are close to Egham now,
[ At the three bridges; Runnymede, Staines, and Staines Railway,
Egham is on the left bank (south) and Staines on the right bank (north).
If you think the names of the banks are reversed - blame the Environment Agency - not me! ]
and may either put up at the “Angler’s Rest” or enter the town and seek bed and board at the “Catherine Wheel”.
Egham is a small town surrounded by some very pretty country, which, having been, bit by bit, blemished by taste, has received the final blow from the conspicuous benevolence of a millionaire.
This gentleman has built a gorgeous palace, nay, two gorgeous palaces, for imbeciles of the superior class.
The buildings, taken together, may be about as big as Windsor Castle, and they are as visibly prominent in the landscape, though not precisely with the same effect.

[ RUNNYMEDE BRIDGE M25 & A30 ]

STAINES BRIDGE

STAINES BRIDGE.

A white granite bridge, designed by Rennie, and opened in 1832, by William IV. and Queen Adelaide, connects Egham with Staines, and in these iron times is a positive relief to the eye afflicted by such viaducts, railway and other, as are rapidly spoiling the Thames.

EGHAM & STAINES

Altogether there is a comfortable modern look about both places, their comeliness, such as it is, being entirely due to natural surroundings.
Egham is mainly one long street.
The church is a plain structure of the negative style of 1820, the tower being a landmark seen from far.
There is likewise a chapel of ease; and there are places of worship for different denominations.
What more of Egham? Strode’s almshouses are in its High Street, and a cottage hospital is healthily placed on Egham Hill.
The Elizabethan house of Great Fosters is in the neighbourhood. Egham has an annual race-meeting, the course being no other than Runnymede.
Staines, new and manufactural as it now appears for the most part—the “linoleum” works having largely contributed to its industrial aspect—is as old as any place in true English history.
Ancient records give the name as Stanes.
Modernised though it be, Staines is by no means bereft of all antiquity.
The church is venerable; and near it is Winicroft House, a Tudor building which some of the good folk, innocent of architecture and chronology, soberly assign to the reign of King John, who sure enough had a palace at Staines, somewhere or other, and not impossibly on this particular site.
One of the earliest bridges in England, preceding the Roman, as may be inferred from the Itinerary of Antoninus, crossed the river here.
When the Roman road to the west was made, and a military station formed at Staines, it is probable that a stronger bridge was built; and, as most of the Roman bridges in England seem to have been of wood, supported by stone piers, the guess that Staines, or more properly Stanes, took its name from those relics of Roman occupancy, is perhaps pardonable.
Just above the town, at the mouth of one of the entrances of the Colne into the Thames, where an ait is formed, stands a monument worth careful attention. It is a square stone shaft on a pedestal, which again is raised on a base formed of three gradations.
This is the ancient London stone, or boundary stone, as it is alternatively called, for it has served during many ages to mark the beginning of Middlesex out of Buckinghamshire, and the termination of the city’s jurisdiction over the waters of Thames.

THE LONDON STONE [above Staines Bridge]

LONDON STONE.

The Conservancy of the river, by long prescription, confirmed by various Charters and Acts of Parliament, was vested in the Lord Mayor and Corporation.
Apart from the courts, which were held by the Lord Mayor in person, and with much state, most of the administrative duties have long been performed by a committee of the Corporation, aided by four harbour-masters, an engineer, water-bailiff, and subordinate officers.
Till recent times, the Navigation and Port of London Committee, as it was called, held jurisdiction from Staines in Middlesex to Gantlet in Kent, and exerted a strong hand in preventing encroachments on “the bed and soil of the river”, or any injury to its banks.
The duties also extended to the regulation of the moorings of vessels in the port, the deepening of channels, the erection and maintenance of public stairs, the repair of locks, weirs, and towing-paths, the control of fisheries, and the seizure of unlawful nets.
Tolls and tonnage-dues contributed to the revenue on which the Corporation depended for means of executing all these obligations.
They had, as one of their public advocates tersely put it, “a surplus below bridge which they were unable to appropriate, and a deficiency above bridge which they had no power of making good”. Still, no hesitation or serious shortcoming appeared in their fulfilment of duties.
But some years ago, a claim to “the bed and soil of the river” was set up by the Crown.
Thirteen years’ litigation ended in a compromise.
The City consented to acknowledge the title of the Crown, and the Crown consented to grant a title to the Corporation, stipulating, however, that a Government scheme should be embodied in an Act of Parliament. Hence, the Thames Conservancy Act of 1857, which vested the rights and duties in a Board composed of the Lord Mayor, two Aldermen, four Common Councilmen, the Deputy-Master of the Trinity House, two persons chosen by the Admiralty, another person chosen by the Board of Trade, and another by the Trinity House, making twelve in all.
By a later enactment these rights and duties were abrogated, and now the jurisdiction of the City over the Upper Thames has altogether ceased.
This is certainly not the place for any argument for or against the deprivation of almost regal authority which the City of London has long swayed.
But up-river men, especially anglers, have cause to be grateful for the protection afforded them in the past by the conservators.

[ STAINES RAILWAY BRIDGE ]

STAINES DEEP

Staines Deep is a good instance.
All the “deeps” on the river are formed for the especial behoof of the angler, who is indebted to their peculiar construction for the abundance of fish that reward his patience, trouble, and skill.
A deep is so staked or otherwise protected that no net or coarse process of any description can remove the fish that collect there.
Old boats are not unfrequently sunk to prevent the use of nets.
All the deeps between Staines and Richmond have been formed on this or some such system at the expense of the London Corporation; and at Staines the never-failing abundance of large roach is due, no doubt, to the careful plan on which the deep is formed.

STAINES & EGHAM INNS

The accessibility of Staines from London makes it exceedingly popular, as is evidenced by the number of boat-houses, and constantly increasing trade of boat-building.
The hotels and inns are not spoilt by custom.
The little “Swan”, one of the prettiest of old-fashioned houses on the river, is just below the bridge on the Surrey side, and really in Egham parish, though boating men generally speak of it as the “Swan” at Staines.
Then there is the “Pack-horse”, on the Middlesex shore, with a good landing-stage.
The “Angel and Crown”, which is traditionally associated with the Emery family, having been kept by one of that name in the days when John Emery was the recognised and unapproached stage Yorkshireman, is in the High Street.
He played Tyke as probably no other man ever played that character; nor was he less effective in the monstrosities of the stage, Caliban being one of his pet parts, and Pan another.
He had a fair range of Shakespearean repertory, being a terribly truthful Barnardine, in Measure for Measure, and a capital Sir Toby Belch.
In some panegyric memorial verses which appeared soon after his death was the line—

And Farmer Ashfield with John Emery died.

This praise was exaggerated and indiscriminate.
The present writer was sitting many years ago at the “Angel and Crown”, in a mixed company of oarsmen, anglers, and residents, when he heard the performance of John Emery as Farmer Ashfield called in question.
Somebody had extolled it for its rich Yorkshire dialect.
Thereupon a grey-headed old man broke in with a quotation from “Speed the Plough”. In the scene supposed to follow a ploughing-match, when Sir Abel Handy’s patent invention has been kicked to pieces, and carried off at the heels of the frightened horses, Bob Handy answers his father’s question, “Where’s my plough?” by turning to the farmer and inquiring the name of the next county. “We ca’s it Wilzhire, sur”, is the reply.
The scene, in fact, is laid in Hants.
The grey-haired man was an old actor, and he finished his pertinent reference to Morton’s play with the quiet remark that he too remembered Emery, and admired him in Yorkshire parts, but that Farmer Ashfield was not a Yorkshire part.
With a London audience in Emery’s reign all countrymen were Yorkshiremen, just as all foreigners were Frenchmen.

We must not leave Staines, where barge-life and riverside character generally may be studied better than at any other spot by the Thames, and the boundary stone without mentioning that this ancient monument bears the traces of its original inscription, dated A.D.1280, “God preserve the City of London”.

PENTON HOOK LOCK

Penton Hook, on the Middlesex side, is a horseshoe-shaped piece of water, where the river shoals out a great deal, so that boats going down the rapid shallow run of half a mile will do well to keep in mid stream, so as to avoid grounding on that shore.
If you pronounce Penton Hook as you see it written, you may chance to miss being understood. Penty Hook is the common pronunciation, and if without the aspirate, so much the nearer local correctness.
Penty Hook Lock has an average fall of two feet and a half.
There is a ferry here, by which you may avoid the Hook and its long pull.
The bend at Penty Hook is the natural course of the river, and its horseshoe form, enclosing a large meadow, has the lock for a base.
For general fishing, Penty Hook has been famed time out of mind; and, though disappointed men are sometimes heard to lament the growing signs that this fishery has begun to be worked out, every season yields many a well-filled creel.
The lock is a good thing for those who voyage for pleasure; not that they go through it, but that it leaves them the undisturbed solitude of the ancient passage, by drawing away the hurriers, who think of nothing but of “getting there”, wherever “there” may be.
This retired and tranquil bend is the haunt of water-fowl, and is a very wilderness of butterflies.
One of the countless tributary streams that feed the Thames, the Abbey River, babbles of days when the monks of Chertsey kept their preserves well filled from these productive fisheries.
Fine trout are taken here still; the strong barbel gives excellent play; a number-twelve hook, mounted on a single hair, and baited with a gentle, will take roach and dace in any quantity, though a heavy float is necessitated by the force and depth of the stream; he who seeks the big chub should cast his line under any of the overhanging willows; and he who scrapes for gudgeon may choose from twenty pitches, any one of which will give him a day’s quick work.

LALEHAM FERRY

LALEHAM FERRY.

Down stream now to Laleham is a short row, or walk, along the Middlesex shore, on which side is the towing-path from Staines as far as Shepperton.Such charm as may be found in a flat landscape—and it is not small when there are trees and water, red roofs and quaint chimneys, sheep, cows, and an old church—we find at Laleham Ferry, one of the quietest and prettiest spots on the Thames.
The nearest railway stations, neither of which is too near, are Staines and Shepperton.
This little village was for nine years of work, study, and wedded happiness, the residence of Dr. Arnold, the mild but firm Erastian in most of his ecclesiastical views, the parental educator, the Liberal in politics but not in party, the Church reformer who clung to the Church not as a priesthood but as a body of believers, the man of thought and man of action.
To Laleham, Thomas Arnold went at twenty-four years of age; took pupils, as, since he was twenty, and elected a Fellow of Oriel College, he had done at Oxford; married, and worked on, with the grand idea before him of bringing new life and spirit into our public-school system.
It was at the end of his nine years’ sojourn at Laleham that he took priest’s orders, and turned a corner in his life whence his useful fame began.
He was appointed to the headmastership of Rugby School.
In those nine years at Laleham, peaceful and happy as they were, sorrows were not “too strictly kept” from Arnold’s home.
Four of his family are buried here; his infant child, his mother, his aunt, and his sister.
It is no matter of mere opinion or dispute that Dr. Arnold and Rugby are associated as no person and place, no school and master, ever were before or since.
Illustrious men have indeed raised the high standard of tuition higher than they found it, at other public schools.
Their names add lustre to a shining roll.
But Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, whose constant longing from his youth had been to “try whether our public school system has not in it some noble elements which may produce fruit even to life eternal”, justified his belief and his mission so well, that he not only raised Rugby School to its highest fame, but introduced a great change and improvement into all school-life in England.
He trusted much to his Sixth form, his elder boys, whom he inspired with love, veneration, and confidence, so that their recognised authority over the junior pupils was exercised as with a reflected light.
He would have no “unpromising subjects”, no pupils likely to taint others.
“It is not necessary”, he said, “that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen”. All good hearts in time were bound to the firm, manly, sympathetic master, whose devotion to duty was contagious, and whose unceasing interest in his scholars was repaid by their reverence for him.
Dr. Arnold’s writings are earnest, clear, and independent.
The six volumes of sermons, chiefly delivered to the Rugby boys, should be read by all boys, all parents, and all masters.
Dean Stanley, his pupil and biographer, collected and republished his tracts on social and political subjects; and in the striking picturesqueness of his “Roman History”, in which he adopts the “ballad-theory” of the Prussian historian, Niebuhr, he forestalled a mode of animated illustration, and contrast of ancient and modern events, which is so popular in the hands of Macaulay and Grote.
Nine years of such a life as Arnold’s would be enough to confer perpetual dignity on a more important place than Laleham, which contains a population of not more than six or seven hundred souls, and is not honoured and spoilt by a “surrounding neighbourhood” of new wealth, refinement, and education.
Not that the village is more rustic—in the depreciative sense—than a village inhabited by people who “have known some nurture” ought to be.
There are a few good old-fashioned houses about it, Arnold’s being one of them; a solid red-brick house with a large garden.
The occupant came to regard the country as “very beautiful”. He had always a resource at hand, he tells us, in the bank of the river up to Staines; “which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house anywhere near it; and the river here has none of that stir of boats and barges upon it, which makes it in many places as public as the high road”. Laleham House, the seat of the Earl of Lucan, is a plain square modern mansion with a Tuscan portico.
The grounds of forty acres are noted for the noble elms, shrubs, lawns, and flower-gardens.
“One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees,”
as Leigh Hunt sang, though not of so large and fine a domain.

LALEHAM CHURCH

LALEHAM CHURCH.

Some years ago a galvanised monkish movement, led by an Anglican clergyman, who went about town with sandalled feet, a girdle of knotted cord, and a cowl over his tonsured head, made a descent on Laleham, where the poor enthusiast tried to found a monastery, with what temporary noise of local wonderment is now a subject of much forgetfulness.
The church at Laleham is small, old, and patched with modern brickwork; and the church across the river, at Chertsey, a mile lower down on the Surrey shore, is square-towered, part ancient and part new.
Nothing very old, or noticeable as old, will be seen if we go inside; but we may do this reverence to modern art if not to antique religion, for there is a memorial bas-relief of simple beauty, carved in a Christian spirit by the Greek-souled sculptor, Flaxman, the subject being the raising of Jairus’ daughter.
Cattle are feeding on the grass of Chertsey Mead, or cooling themselves in the shallow stream.
How different are they from the droves of builders and architects who try to improve the banks of the river! The cattle positively decline all effort at picturesqueness; but they are picturesque, which the new houses or villas, and stuck-up towers and turrets, with all their ornamental pretence, decidedly are not.

CHERTSEY BRIDGE

CHERTSEY BRIDGE.

A hundred years ago was built, by James Payne, the bridge of stone, with seven arches, the high middle arch being beneath a pointed summit of the parapet.
This bridge, though steep, seems right under the lock, which is built of wood, and has a fall that averages three feet.

ALBERT SMITH & HIS BROTHER

Ancient and modern both are the intimate associations of Chertsey. Among the modern are reminiscences of Albert Smith, whom even James Hannay, a contemner of comic authorship, allowed to be a writer who was easy to read.
He rattled on, with too little thought, it may be, but with a shrewd common-sense and an almost feminine justness of view, that won him friends among his enemies, even if a careless witticism now and then made an enemy of a friend.
This was never for long; while it is certain that Albert Smith lived down a great deal of hard and even scornful criticism.
He brought round all his old Punch companions from whom he had cut adrift; and even the high-toned Examiner, seldom merciful to “lights writers”, pronounced one of his books of travel to be, “frank, genial, and manly”. He practised in his early career as a dentist, but soon drifted into magazine work, and amused the laughter-loving public with his “Adventures of Mr. Ledbury, and his friend, Jack Johnson”. The man-about-town style of writing was more amusingly and inoffensively exemplified in Albert Smith than in any of his rivals; for with him it was spontaneous—a hearty emanation from personal habit, which had grown into nature. Student-life—medical-student-life, that is to say—in Paris and London gave both incident and tone to his tales and sketches—the incident being of a practically jocular kind; and the tone, that of rollicking levity.
He went a little out of his way to take up historical romancing in his novel on the subject of the venomous Marguerite d’Aubray, Marchioness of Brinvilliers; and Douglas Jerrold went a good deal out of his way to assail his “former crony” Albert’s dabbling in “arsenicated literature”. More congenial, certainly, to his powers of lively common-place were the stories of “Christopher Tadpole” and “The Scattergood Family”.
He had some dramatic faculty, which took now and then the proper dramatic form of theatric art; and, beside the stage-burlesques collaborated by him with Shirley Brooks, Charles Kenny, Stoqueler, and others, he wrote a few pieces, whereof one was suggested by the famous Chertsey bell, and a romantic legend in connection with that relic of Saxon days.
Albert Smith’s brother Arthur, a man of singular gentleness, was devoted to him, and spared no pains to please and serve him in a multitude of ways, little and great.
The affection which existed between the two was never shaded by difference of any kind.
Here is a little story which now sees, for the first time, the light of print:—When Albert Smith was giving his long-lived entertainment of “Mont Blanc”, Arthur, his right-hand man in the business of management, took a holiday, and, visiting some glass-works in the north, was so struck with the resemblance of certain waste products to icicles, that he brought a number of specimens away with him, had them mounted like pendants, and, on his return to Piccadilly, hung them in triumph round the eaves of the little chalet which formed a prominent part of the set scene.
Albert, who would not have damped his brother’s delight for all the world, was “charmed” with the effect, and thanked the good Arthur again and again.
“I can’t tell him”, said he, secretly, to the present writer, “that the flowering plants, the Alpine heaths, and all, are in full summer-bloom. It would break his heart to be reminded of the little contradiction in the seasons”.

CHERTSEY ABBEY

As the first religious house founded in Surrey, the abbey, of which there are now few vestiges, gave Chertsey a name of imperishable renown in English annals.
We are carried back by the sound to Saxon days, to King Egbert and the sainted Erkenwald, who founded the great monastery at Barking as well as that of Chertsey.
Abbot Erkenwald received his first Charter from Frithwald, sub-regulus of Surrey, nine years after the foundation of this abbey of Cerotæsai, Cerotesege, or Certesyg, as the name last given appears in “Domesday Book”.
The etymology, then, of our familiar Chertsey is “Cerota's ey”, or island.
Erkenwald’s monastery and church were erected on a grassy ait, formed by the Thames and the little stream now called the Abbey River, or Bourne.

MONASTIC FISH

When was there ever monastery or abbey built in England, France, or other part of Christendom, but it was near a river, teeming with fish?
In nine out of ten cases, the ground has been an island, whatever it may be now.
Take Westminster, for instance.
It is not, you will say, insulated; but it was, and its name was the Isle of Thorns; and the very first angelical promise in relation to the Saxon abbey was made to the fisherman, Edric, who was told by a supernatural visitant, sent by St. Peter, that a plentiful supply of fish would never fail him so long as he duly carried his tithe to the monks.
From that time, quite early in the seventh century, till near the end of the fourteenth, the Thames fishermen religiously paid their tithe of salmon to the abbey; and it is a singular fact that the first violation of the custom was by a priest, the vicar of Rotherhithe, who denied his tithe until the monks of Westminster enforced it by law, protesting that the right had been granted to them by St. Peter, when their abbey was founded.
As an instance of the primitive state of society, in the England of the Middle Ages, every bearer of fish to the Abbey of Westminster sat by prescriptive right at the prior’s table that day, and could demand ale and bread at the buttery-hatch to be brought him by the cellarman.
Fish, not on fast days alone, but as a constant staple of diet, was one of the needs of monastic life.
Nor did the monks and their lay brothers generally wait for tithings from secular piscatory sources, as the fraternity at Westminster seems to have done.
Mr. Dendy Sadler has no doubt hit with main truth of history, if with some exuberance of playful humour, the monkish habit of angling. At Chertsey the Benedictine friars of the tenth century left such evidence of perfection in fish-culture as is pleasingly apparent to every Thames angler of the present day; and the salmon-trout nurseries of Mr. Forbes, on the Surrey shore, revive a goodly tradition of the olden time.
Pike, perch, chub, bream, and barbel abound near Chertsey and Shepperton, as of yore; but the good monks, let us remember, had the lordly salmon always at hand, as well as the trout, which was too plentiful to suggest any thought of artificial hatching.

CHERTSEY ABBEY RUINS

The once stately abbey, of which all the remains now are the fragments of an arched gateway, part of a wall, and a bit of encaustic tile pavement, occupied an area of four acres, and looked like a town.
The Danes pillaged and burnt the place two hundred years after its foundation, murdering the abbot, Beocca, with all his monks, to the number of ninety.
It is scarcely possible, even now, to dig deep on the ground without unearthing bones and fragments of masonry, relics either of the ancient Saxon foundation, or of the second and still Saxon convent re-established by King Edgar, in the tenth century.
During successive periods many great men were interred here; but the abbey is chiefly remarkable, as a place of sepulture, for having been the brief resting-place of Henry VI., whose remains were brought thither from Blackfriars by water.
It was on her way “toward Chertsey with her holy load” that the Lady Anne encountered crook-backed Richard of Gloucester, as the scene in Shakespeare’s play of Richard III. vividly represents.
Having been interred there with much solemnity, the corse of the murdered king was only suffered to remain undisturbed till the second year of his successor’s reign, when Richard caused the coffin to be removed to Windsor.
The weak but well-meaning king, whose piety and love of learning may be said to have been too strong for his mental sinew, held Chertsey in high regard and favour, following, indeed, other sovereigns by whom in long succession from Saxon times the abbey was often strengthened and endowed.
To benefit a religious institution and the town pertaining thereto was formerly one and the same act, a state of things now hardly comprehended in its full significance.
It was to the abbot, in kingly piety, that Henry VI. granted the right of holding a fair on St. Ann’s Hill, on St. Ann’s Day.
The “Black Cherry Fair”, as it is called, is now held in the town, and the date is changed from the 26th July to the 6th August.
Another great fair, for cattle, horses, and poultry, is also held there on the 26th September, in view of Michaelmas Day, which ancient feast is generally honoured with the goose as a standing dish; for by that time of the year this bird, hatched in the spring, has attained a goodly form and condition, while preserving some of its tender youth.
So notably do these considerations affect the fair in September, at Chertsey, that it is popularly designated the Goose and Onion Fair, the sale of geese and onions eclipsing all other traffic, not only as regards poultry, but horses and cattle to boot.
As before observed, mills and fisheries survive the changes of epochs with extraordinary vitality.
We have seen that Chertsey is still a head-quarters of angling, as it was a thousand years ago; and the abbey mills flourish in modern fashion to this day.
More remarkable far is the survival of the curfew bell; for there are fisheries and mills of ancient origin all over England, but the curfew is heard at few other places than Chertsey.
Here exists a curious old custom of tolling the day of the month, after a brief pause, at the close of the “knell of parting day”. In the tower of the rebuilt parish church, with a peal of six bells, is one that is believed to have belonged to the ancient abbey.
There is warrant for the tradition which assigns so venerable an age to this bell; for the Latin inscription

ORA  MENTE  PIA   PRO  NOBIS  VIRGO  MARIA

is in Anglo-Saxon characters.

COWLEY AT CHERTSEY

For a little more than two years, Abraham Cowley, the poet, intending to husband his small fortune, lived at Chertsey, or, rather, continued to exist for a short time.
His desire for solitude provoked from Johnson, the lover of city life, a biographical sneer.
It is true that the first night Cowley came to his half-timber house at Chertsey—he had desiderated a brick house, by-the-by—he caught a severe cold, and kept his room for ten days; but it is also true that he was an invalid when he came from Barn Elms, whence he was driven by illness.
A series of mishaps befell him, which he recounted in a half ludicrous light, in a letter to his friend Sprat; and this letter it is that Johnson recommends “to the consideration of all that may hereafter pant for solitude”. Cowley’s house, which he only left in funereal pomp and state to be conveyed by water to Westminster Abbey, and there buried, is still sometimes called by its old name, Porch House, from a porch that once projected into the highway, but was pulled down a hundred years ago.
In the garden is a fine group of trees, one of which, a horse-chestnut of great size and beauty, sheltered the poet in the short term of his life at Chertsey.

DICKENS AND CHERTSEY

A memorable episode of Dickens’s early work of fiction, “Oliver Twist”, is graphically connected with this agricultural town, the most commercial establishment in which is a brewery.
There were no railways to speak of when Fagin, the Jew that Dickens drew, was redrawn by Cruikshank, and when Bill Sikes, and Nancy, and Toby Crackit, and the Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates, and the bad people generally, seemed as real as, on the other and supernaturally amiable side, Rose Maylie and the rest were creatures of angelic imagination.
There is nothing more real in this story, nor in all the stories that Dickens ever wrote, than the expedition by Sikes and Oliver, from Bethnal Green, through Finsbury and Barbican, to the West-end—past Hyde Park Corner, Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew, and Brentford—past Hampton and Halliford, Shepperton and Sunbury—till Chertsey was reached; and, joined now by Toby Crackit, they made their way through the silent town to the scene of the projected burglary.

AROUND CHERTSEY

Boating-men know well the landing-stage at the “Bridge House”, one of those inns where the comfort is not diminished either by negligence or false pretence.
This is the recognised “hotel” of Chertsey; but the “Cricketers”, in the Bridge Road, half a mile from the town, is the favourite resort of anglers.
Many pleasant walks are still to be found near Chertsey, St. Ann’s Hill being within a mile.
As the residence of Charles James Fox, the house, with its gardens, lawns, shady walks, and quaint summer-houses, should be seen by all who have the opportunity of visiting it.
The old gate of wrought iron, though not by any means extraordinary, nor indeed nearly so elaborate as some examples of smiths’ work still to be seen about old parts of Chelsea, Chiswick, and Roehampton, is characteristic and significant of its period.
From this gate to the summit of the hill is a short walk which affords a delightful view on a fine day, extending to Windsor on the one side, and to London, a distance of twenty miles, on the other.
St. Ann’s Well, on the descent, is a sylvan spot, which might better have been left alone than “improved”, as it has been.
It once looked like what it probably is, a veritable relic of the chapel which has been swept away like its contemporary foundation, the abbey on the marshy island below.
St. Ann’s Hill is a favourite place for picnics, as also for volunteer exercises and reviews.

RIVER WEY

Returning towards Chertsey Bridge, on our downward Thames journey, we see the wood-crowned heights of Woburn, and presently make or renew acquaintance with the Wey, another tributary of the metropolitan river.
The Wey rises in Hampshire, near Alton, where good ale used to be brewed, and indeed continues to be brewed still, in spite of the fact that this national beverage, the wine of the country, is getting more and more into the hands of a few noted brewers, and consequently is more and more “all alike”, which is a sad sameness to think of! Time was when small breweries were oftener attached to inns of good repute, and when to taste the ale was a complimentary obligation.
It is no question of curious tasting in these times; for you know pretty well what you are going to get when you ask for “a glass of bitter”, which is generally good, but somewhat monotonous.
What has become of all the country home-brewed, of the ales of different colleges, for example?

I have a friend who loveth me,
And sendeth me ale of Trinity,

sang Barry Cornwall. Where is now the good ale, and where are the good fellows who sent it?

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.

Through Farnham, Godalming, Guildford, Woking, Byfleet, and Weybridge, through all that country of heath and health, of pine-trees and rabbit-warrens, of scenery that you feel and breathe as well as see, the Hampshire stream flows and grows till it mingles with the waters of Thames below Chertsey, at a mill in the bend of the stream.
It is said that the best hay in England comes from Chertsey mead, which also, during a large part of the year, affords right of commonage to neighbouring farmers for their cows; and the milk testifies to the richness of the pasture.

WEYBRIDGE

It is at Weybridge that the Wey is joined by the Bourne, as also by the Basingstoke canal, and the meeting of the three streams is in a pleasant spot.
Weybridge and Oatlands Park are places that hold renown in common.
Round about the neighbourhood are country seats, beautifully situate, and two miles south of the town or village is Crockham Hill, from which a transcendent prospect of the whole weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex is gained, never to be forgotten.
By Chart, or by Westerham Common, the way to Crockham Gap is the loveliest of Surrey walks, and indeed the beauty of the district cannot be overpraised.At the Domesday survey, “Webrige” was a manor held by the Abbot of Chertsey, and its value was twenty shillings.
With other lands, the property pertaining to the ancient abbey, it was annexed by Henry VIII. to the honour of Hampton Court.

OATLANDS

The estate of Oatlands was acquired by the king in manner following.
He was negotiating its purchase when the owner, one William Rede, died, leaving his son John, a child, the heir.
A short way was taken by the king to remove all difficulty.
He constituted Sir Thomas Cromwell guardian of the boy, and the rest was plain.
Very speedily the erection of a palace for Anne of Cleves, the king’s intended wife, was commenced, the materials being found in the dismantled monasteries.
Stone was brought from Chertsey and Bisham; marble for pavements from Abingdon; while the good red bricks which composed the walls were made at Woking, which name was spelt by the accountants “Okyng”, much as it is pronounced at the present day by rustic natives.
For his orchards, the king took apple, pear, and cherry trees from the orchards and gardens of Chertsey Abbey.
The interior walls of Oatlands Palace were hung with the costliest tapestries of France and Flanders, the floors being covered with “carpets of Turque”. But before the casket was ready the jewel had been discarded.
Anne of Cleves, on whom Henry bestowed an uncomplimentary epithet, had come, and had proved unacceptable.
The bride was divorced, and a new bride was taken in her stead.
With the new bride Henry required a new palace. Oatlands was consigned to the keeping of Sir Anthony Brown; and, save that it was made the occasional residence of the Princess Mary, we hear very little more of Oatlands in King Henry’s reign.
We may fancy it a many-gabled, many-towered, Tudor edifice of red brick, with stone quoins and dressings, ornamental chimney-shafts, and handsome bays, like Hampton Court, in fact, with the same kind of turreted central gate-house in the principal front.
There are drawings of it in the Bodleian at Oxford.
The foundations are said to have been traced over fourteen acres.
Terraces, flower-gardens, orchards, fountains, fishponds, and detached summer-houses adorned the pleasance round the magnificent edifice; and beyond, fenced about by a quickset hawthorn hedge, was the deer park.

OATLANDS GROTTO

An example of wasted labour and misapplied ingenuity, the grotto constructed in the eighteenth century by an Italian and his two sons for Henry Clinton, Duke of Newcastle, may be cited as one of the questionable glories of modern Oatlands.
The artificers were twenty years at their work, which cost the Duke, it is said, £40,000; the sum stated in the early accounts being between £12,000 and £13,000.
Outside, this egregious sham is built of tufa, which is a volcanic substance, or the calcareous deposit of certain springs.
Within, the building has three or four chambers connected by low dark passages, on the ground floor, and one large chamber over all, with an elaborate cupola of satin-spar stalactites.
All the inner walls are a mosaic of minerals, shells, and spars of various kinds, blending in many devices, and inlaid with endless patience and skill.
Among the many fine specimens of minerals still left, are quartz, crystals, and ammonites of rare perfection.
Horace Walpole delivered himself of this criticism on the Oatlands grotto: “Oatlands, that my memory had taken it into its head was the centre of Paradise, is not half so Elysian as I used to think.
The grotto, a magnificent structure of shell-work, is a square, regular, and, which never happened to grotto before, lives up one pair of stairs, and yet only looks on a basin of dirty water”.
It is evident that Horace Walpole spoke of the upper chamber as the grotto itself; and so it was mainly.
This bizarre kind of architecture was quite in the taste of George IV., and accordingly, when he was Prince of Wales, and just after Waterloo, he entertained at a supper in this wonderful room the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and the princes and generals in their train.
As being tastefully in accord with a stalactite cavern, lit up by cut-glass chandeliers, the gilt chairs and sofas had satin cushions embroidered by the Duchess of York.
Oatlands underwent many transformations; was destroyed by fire in different ages; and has sprung up again and again, like an exceedingly protean phœnix.
The only vestiges of its ancient grandeur are the massive gateway and some magnificent cedars by the river.
It is curious to think of its many transformations, during the dwindling and declining periods of its history.
Once it was a rambling, mock-battlemented structure, in the taste of Strawberry Hill Gothic. A quasi-Italian style has been its later phase, and this remains, in the aspect now presented by the house, which has been converted to the purpose of a residential hotel.
Oatlands has a longer story than can be told, even in outline, here.
After Henry VIII. abandoned his intention to keep up its royal splendour, it became the temporary abode, at different periods, of Edward VI., Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Henrietta Maria—their youngest son, Henry, being born here—Queen Henrietta’s second husband, the Earl of St. Albans, and then a succession of nobles, under various terms of tenure, till the Duke of York purchased the property in 1790, when the rococo edifice on the Strawberry Hill pattern of modern antiquity made its appearance, and became the bone of contention between two architects, the inglorious though not mute Pugin and Barry of the time, as we may call them—each claiming the honour of its invention.
Greville’s Memoirs give us as much as we want of the private life of His Royal Highness in his queer castle, or, if further information be desired, some interesting additions may be found in the “Life of George Brummell, Esq., commonly called Beau Brummell”, who passed much of his time there, and whose most constant benefactor, after he had been cut by the Prince Regent, and other summer-friends, was sa toute affectionnée amie et servante, the kind Duchess.
In justice to one or other of the rival claimants to the glory of architectural design, it may be said that the outside folly of Oatlands, as conceived either by Holland, the architect of Drury Lane Theatre—his best work—or John Carter, more favourably known by his etchings from the Gothic, was redeemed by its interior fitness and stately proportion.
An example of the effect produced by transplanted architecture is conspicuous on Weybridge Green.
Here, a Cockney wanderer out of his element of Babel life, stands the column celebrated by Gay in his “Trivia”.

Where famed St. Giles’s ancient limits spread,
An inrailed column rears its lofty head;
Here to seven streets seven dials count the day,
And from each other catch the circling ray

A rover, indeed, was this monument from Seven Dials.
First it was taken to Sayes Court, but never erected.
Wanting a memorial to the Duchess of York, the villagers of Weybridge picked up the neglected masonry, altered it to suit their purpose, by discarding the dial-faced top and substituting a clumsy crown, and stuck it where it now stands.
In the crypt of a small Roman Catholic chapel, facing a fine group of fir-trees on Weybridge Common, the body of Louis Philippe was laid, till the royal remains were taken to France and re-interred in the Orleans mausoleum at Dreux.

WEYBRIDGE AND THE BOATING MAN

Largely frequented by anglers, Weybridge must take care if it desires to retain the favour of boating-men.
While the towing-path crosses the boat-yard, and dredging is neglected by those, whoever they may be, on whom the duty rests, it is very difficult to avoid grounding;
so that many owners have been taking their boats away, as the constant dragging not only scratches but strains them.

SHEPPERTON

[ Note that the Desborough Cut, which is now the main navigation channel, bypassing Shepperton on the old river, was not made until 1935 ]

Shepperton, on the Middlesex shore, is a pretty village, small and quiet, with its chief places of residence hidden away behind trees, or peeping out upon the river.
It has a railway terminus, on the South Western system, and is about an hour, that is, nineteen miles, from Waterloo.
The deeps afford tolerable fly-fishing in the trout season, and are more frequently fished for jack, perch, roach, and barbel.
There are several good swims in pretty equal favour with anglers, to wit the upper deep, the lower deep, and the old deep, east of the creek rails.
Besides these, the creek itself is often resorted to The anglers’ inns at Shepperton are the “Anchor” and the “Crown”.
It is an unspoilt Thames-side village, this Shepperton, in spite of its many pleasure-seeking visitors; a class, to say the sad truth, apt to disclose a selfish indifference to the pleasure of others.
If the holiday-maker is to be traced by scientific investigation, the marks to be looked for will be broken bottles, greasy sandwich-papers, and lobster-shell, just as flint tools and weapons denote other and earlier savages who have lived on the earth, and have made it as disagreeable as possible for their fellow-brutes.

SHEPPERTON LOCK

Shepperton Lock and Ferry are both picturesque in themselves, as well as being foregrounds of scenery that is charming to the eye nurtured by art.
Truly, landscape-painting has done noble service in fostering the love of nature.
Though real beauty must be above the skill of man to imitate, it is a curious truth that no age in which that skill has not been exercised has ever left any written records of a feeling for the grandeur of mountains, or the simple loveliness of woods, fields, and brooks.
Chaucer, you say? Why, Chaucer pictured everything because he had seen it in pictures; had the very soul of a limner; lived in the sincerest age of art; saw Flanders and Italy; was familiar with all that was exquisite in the refinement of courts; and, unless his appointment as clerk of the works at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, was a gross sinecure, knew how a daisy should look in stone as well as in nature’s finer fashioning.
He who imagines Chaucer to have displayed natural observation without cognisance of art has totally misread Chaucer’s time, rich in actual colour, as in the very dress that distinguished “gentle and simple”; for, as Mr. Ruskin has said, speaking of “the lovely and fantastic dressing of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries” (in the very heart and flower of which period Chaucer lived), “no good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful”.
Shepperton, hale, green, and old, in its plentiful trees, mostly elms and horse-chestnuts, has likewise an age in history.
It is a noted spot for Roman remains; it has a church that was venerable and still retains claims to veneration; and it has a rectory-house older, for the most part, than the parish church to which it belongs.
The dwelling in question is of fifteenth century erection, and is principally of timber, the soundest, the strongest, the most enduring—English oak.
Builders will come back in time to the wisdom of such building, as they are even now aware of the folly which assumes iron to be fireproof.

HALLIFORD

Halliford is our next halt, a mile down from Shepperton Railway Station, the nearest to the place.
It is quite accessible enough for anglers, whose interest, if not whose taste, leads them to a preference of seclusion to racket and noise.
Proverbially “jolly,” the angler understands jollity in the Waltonian sense, as, indeed, the most sensible of us all, anglers or not, understand it.
The vulgar adverb, “awfully”, does, indeed, too literally qualify at times the modern adjective.
Halliford Bridge was washed away some years ago by the floods;

WALTON BRIDGE

and now the Surrey and Middlesex shores are connected by a brick and iron structure which is named Walton Bridge, and which, having been the occasion of war between Bumbledom on both sides the river, was painted of two colours, a chromatic difference that greatly increased the normal ugliness of the design.
The most plentiful fish at Halliford are roach and bream, but there is an abundant variety of others.
To distinguish this little place from another Halliford, which is a hamlet of Sunbury, it is sometimes called Lower Halliford.
The views along and across the river, every way, are charming; and as we look over to Oatlands, the Surrey hills form a beautiful background; while on one side we have Walton and Ashley Park, and on the other Weybridge.
The “Red Lion” is a favourite haunt of anglers, and all who visit the spot by road or river; and other houses of entertainment are the “Crown”, the “Ship”, and Mrs. Searle’s.
The narrow creek adjacent to the “Red Lion” is in frequent request as a harbour for punts and small craft in general.
A little further and we come to Walton, having crossed the river once again into Surrey.

HALLIFORD.

WALTON-ON-THAMES

Walton-on-Thames was, in old Saxon days, as its name plainly indicates, a walled town.
Etymology apart, the traces of its having been fortified speak for themselves in the neighbouring remains of important earthworks.
It is now a village; and, as a village, large; but it is not quite large enough to be considered a town; and of its walls there are no traces above ground.
Walton Bridge crosses the river just where there was once a ford that, as relics show, was strongly defended.

COWEY STAKES

A little above Walton is the spot at which Cæsar crossed, in the time of his second invasion.
It is called Cowey Stakes, and has afforded matter for many an antiquarian discussion.
The “Stakes” were driven in front of the bank to repel attempts at landing.
Some accounts of them state that they were placed upright in two rows, across the shallow bend of the river, so as to support a bridge.

WALTON CHURCH

Walton has an interesting church, very old in some parts, but modern in others, with Norman piers, on one of which may be read, deeply cut, the verse ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, when princess, and when it was sought by Mary to entrap her in a heresy regarding the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Christ was the Worde and spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what the Worde doth make it,
That I believe, and take it

Among the monuments are works of note by Roubiliac and Chantrey, the older sculptor excelling in the bold inventiveness and forcible execution of his work, a superb monument to Lord Shannon.
On the left side of the communion table is buried William Lilly, the astrologer, that “cunning man, hight Sidrophel”, as he figures, or is supposed to figure, in “Hudibras”. Another tomb, but it is in the churchyard, not the church, holds the remains of “bright, broken Maginn”, who sleeps without a memorial.
President Bradshaw’s house, at the back of Church Street, is divided into a group of wretched tenements, all in a squalid condition; yet in a room on the ground-floor of one of them, covered with dirt and whitewash, is a carved oak chimney-piece, with coupled columns and a cornice, the room itself being panelled, and an elaborately carved beam crossing the ceiling.
There is a tradition that Charles I.’s death-warrant was signed in this room.
One of the curiosities of Walton-on-Thames, shown at a house next that of Rosewell, the boat-builder, is a scold’s gag, or bridle, few examples of which instrument yet remain in England.
This particular specimen bears an inscription which, though now illegible, has no doubt been accurately quoted as follows:—

Chester presents Walton with a Bridle,
To curb Women’s tongues when they bee idle.

Chester, according to tradition, was a person who lost an estate through the evil speaking of a loose-tongued gossip, and took this mode of revenging himself on the sex.
The bridle is a combination of head-piece and collar, a flat iron projection inside the latter being forced over the tongue, while a slit in the former, which passes over the face and skull, allows the nose to protrude.
Not far from the church, on the road to the railway station, is Ashley Park, with its late Tudor or early Stuart mansion of red brick, containing a great hall, which takes the whole height of the house, and a gallery extending throughout its entire length of a hundred feet.
The park, a richly wooded demesne, adjoins Oatlands.
From St. George’s Hill, in the vicinity, the magnificent prospect includes seven counties.
The stream at Walton Bridge runs over many shallows, fast on the Surrey shore, and it is not easy to sail round the bend.

SUNBURY

SUNBURY WEIR.

Along a pleasant reach of the river, on the Middlesex bank, lies the village of Sunbury, with three or four boating and angling inns, which are much frequented by pleasure parties, though it is always a marvel to foreigners that the accommodation at these and other Thames-side inns should not be of a higher order.
At Sunbury are the rearing-ponds of the Thames Angling Preservation Society; and the fishing of all kinds is excellent, no part of the river affording better sport with the fly than Sunbury Weir, which abounds with trout.
The “Flower Pot”, the “Magpie”, and the “Castle” are in Thames Street; and the “Weir Hotel” is on the Surrey side.
The stone lock and lock-house are prettily placed amid pretty scenery, and there is a good camping-ground.

SUNBURY CHURCH

As it is not often that a church is altered to its improvement, justice demands a recognition of the fact that the church of the Virgin Mary, by the river-side at Sunbury, from having been as ugly a brick building as was ever consecrated to public worship, has been rendered sightly by the insertion of new windows and the introduction of a semicircular chancel, and an elaborate Byzantine porch with stone arcades on either side.
Till changed to the form we now see, the church appeared as it had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century.
The ancient church was of Saxon foundation, dating from the time of Edward the Confessor.
When the Orleans family made their retreat in the neighbourhood of the Thames, the Duke of Nemours assisted at the consecration, by Dr. (now Cardinal Archbishop) Manning, of a small Roman Catholic church a short distance off, prettily constructed of stone, from the drawing of Mr. Charles Buckler.

The sailing clubs have made Sunbury a rendezvous, and boat-building is a prosperous occupation.

BETWEEN HAMPTON AND SUNBURY.

GARRICK'S VILLA

GARRICK'S VILLA
[ This is the best print I know of the old custom of towing - which was so usual that the historic writers did not think to mention how it was done!
( How do you pass a boat coming the other way along the one tow path? )