CHAPTER IV.

STREATLEY TO HENLEY.

Streatley, the Artists' Mecca--Goring versus Streatley--Goring from the Toll-gate--Streatley Mill--Weirs and Backwaters--Antiquity of Streatley and Goring--Goring Church--Common Wood--Basildon Ferry and Hart's Wood--A Thames Osier Farm--Whitchurch Lock--Pangbourne--Hardwicke House and Mapledurham--Caversham Bridge--Reading and its Abbey--A Divergence to the Kennet, with calls at Marlborough, Hungerford, and Newbury--The Charms of Sonning--"The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned"--St. Patrick's Stream--Shiplake Weir--Wargrave and Bolney Court--Park Place--Marsh Lock--Remarks on Thames Angling--The Approach 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 left 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. 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. 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.

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 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. 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. 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, 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 Ian. 17, 1651, which he embracied Ivly 14, 1658.

/Epitaph./

"He, whose Renowne, for what completeth Man, Speaks lowder, better things, then Marble can: She, whose Religious Deeds makes Hardwick's Fame, Breathe as the Balme of Lybbe's Immortall Name, Are once more Ioyned 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. 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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

The Thames between Purley and the eelbucks at Chasey Farm 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.

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

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. 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.

The Thames leaves Reading to the right, 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 left, 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.

Full of historical memories (it is supposed that the Danes brought their war-ships 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.

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.

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 left 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, 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. 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. 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 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 line--

"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 written--

"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.

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 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. 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. Down stream Wargrave Hill with its imposing white house finishes the view for the time being.

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 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; 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. 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. 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. Up stream a fine pine wood will be noticed; Hennerton House, to the right, stands on a lofty steep, embowered in trees; 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 right hand, 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.

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.

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. Underneath the high staging, 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 weirpools. 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.

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/.