CHAPTER VII.

WINDSOR TO HAMPTON COURT.

Leaving Windsor--Eton, its History and its Worthies--The College Buildings--Windsor Park--The Long Walk--The Albert Bridge--Datchet and Falstaff--Old Windsor--"Perdita's" Grave--The Tapestry Works--The "Bells of Ouseley"--Riverside Inns--The Loves of Harry and Anne Boleyn--Magna Charter Island--Runnymede--The Poet of Cooper's Hill--Fish at Bell Weir--A Neglected Dainty--Egham and Staines--John Emery--Penton Hook--Laleham--Dr. Arnold--Chertsey--The Lock and Bridge--Albert Smith and his Brother--Chertsey Abbey--Black Cherry Fair--Cowley the Poet--A Scene from "Oliver Twist"--St. Ann's Hill--Weybridge--Oaklands and the Grotto--Shepperton Lock and Ferry--Halliford--Walton--The Scold's Bridle--Sunbury--Hampton--Moulsey Hurst and its Sporting Associations--Hampton Court Bridge.

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 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.

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 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. 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,"[6] 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.

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.

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, 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. We are close to Egham now, 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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.

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. 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. 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 "light 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."

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. 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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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 ph[oe]nix. 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.

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, 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 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 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; 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.

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. 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 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.

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. 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.

As we near Hampton, the historical and the "Happy," Garrick's villa comes into view. The watery way, down from Sunbury, is between banks which are flat and uninteresting, osiers hiding the land from those who voyage in boats. Robert Adam, who, in conjunction with his brother James, improved the street architecture of London--their fraternal labours being commemorated in the name of that since-spoilt river-terrace, the "Adelphi"--built the Corinthian front of Hampton House, as it was called when Garrick bought it, though the mansion has since been renamed after the great actor himself. Adam's portico, the salient feature of the house, reaches, with its pediment, above the attic storey. Much is said about the building, its contents and its visitors, by Horace Walpole; for Garrick's dinners, his illuminated grounds, and his night-fêtes, attracted company of the first order. On the lawn, near the water's edge, was and is a miniature Grecian temple, of octagonal shape, with an Ionic porch, the structure being designed for a summer-house, in which for a time was placed Roubiliac's statue of Shakespeare, to be removed, after Garrick's death, to the British Museum. Garrick planted his domain very tastefully, and the trees that have grown to goodly height and umbrageousness since his day, now invest the spot with a dignified grace. For twenty-five years Garrick enjoyed his liberal ease and the pleasures of well-chosen society in this home of comfort and elegance; and his wife, who survived him by forty-three years, living to a great age, continued to dwell here, maintaining everything in the same place as when he was her companion. The forget-me-not, commonest of wild flowers in this neighbourhood, finds surely a congenial soil where David Garrick's memory was cherished so fondly and so long. Islands in thick succession dot the stream, and when fishing-rods are patiently extended here and there, the picture is at once socially and tranquilly suggestive. Opposite the town and church of Hampton lies Moulsey Hurst, between the villages of East and West Moulsey. This wide and beautiful meadow, "hard and smooth as velvet," as one of Archibald Constable's literary correspondents describes it, has been degraded in all ways attributable to civilisation. As a race-course, it is probably the vulgarest in the world; and its history is bound up with the annals of duelling and prize-fighting. A letter, very characteristic of the time, contains the following candid record:--"Breakfasted at Mr. Maule's very early, and went along with him and the Bailie to see the great fight between Belcher and Cribb, at Moseley Hurst, near Hampton. The day was very fine, and we had a charming drive out in our coach-and-four, and beat all the coaches and chaises by the way. We had three hard runs with one post-chaise and four very fine horses, before we could pass it, and drove buggies, horsemen, and all off the road into lanes and doors of houses." Among the gentlemen present, as the same frank-spoken witness testifies, were "the Duke of Kent, Mr. Wyndham, Lord Archibald Hamilton (a famous hand, I am told), Lord Kinnaird, Mr. T. Sheridan, &c. &c., and all the fighting-men in town, of course." These last, we read further, were "the Game Chicken, Woods, Tring, Pitloon, &c. Captain Barclay of Urie received us, and put us across the river in a boat, and he followed with Cribb, whom he backed at all hands. The Hon. Barclay (Berkeley) Craven was the judge." This charming chronicler proceeds to tell us that the odds were on Belcher, but that the hero in question, after a long fight, "was at length obliged to give in." Poor fellow! Modern adherents to the theory that fisticuffs had any early origin in Great Britain may be consoled for the decadence of the "good old national art of self-defence" by the assurance that boxing was a practice which endured little more than a century and a half, if so long, and was learnt from North American savages. Its real antiquity is Greek, the grounds for believing that the Anglo-Saxons, and, after them, the Plantagenets, favoured this form of pugilism being extremely slender. The English prize-fighters of the eighteenth century encountered one another with broadswords. There are other "arts of self-defence" far better entitled to rank as English than boxing. The quarter-staff is one.

On the road to Moulsey from Walton-on-Thames stands Apps Court, or the modern representative of that capital mansion, once inhabited by Mrs. or Miss Catherine Barton, who might have been called a "professional beauty" had the phrase, together with photography, been invented in her day. The manor was bequeathed to her for life by Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax. She was a reigning "toast," and her name frequently occurs in Swift's journal to Stella. Catherine Barton, who was a sort of niece to Sir Isaac Newton, being, in fact, the daughter of his half-sister, has been spoken of as the mistress of Lord Halifax; though it is now pretty clearly established that she was privately married to him, before his elevation to the peerage. She afterwards married a master of the Mint, who succeeded in that office her illustrious uncle. Many other persons of note are historically associated with "delightful Ab's Court," so designated by Pope, in his Horatian epistle to one of its proprietors, Colonel Cotterell. The grounds, like most of the Thames pleasances, contain some grand timber; oaks and elms being conspicuous objects.

A little past Moulsey Lock is Hampton Court Bridge, a five-arched iron structure, by which we take our way to the palace and its famous grounds.

/Godfrey Turner/.