SURREY’S crooked northern border is washed by the Thames, “great father of the British floods,” to whom so many compliments, vows, and addresses have been offered in prose and verse:—

These lines, in which let no writer scorn to join chorus of quotation, are from Denham’s Cooper’s Hill, a title supplied by the “airy mountain” that raises its “proud head”—to a poetic height of 200 feet and more—upon the north-western corner of Surrey. Descending the river from Windsor, after passing Old Windsor Church, we enter this county beyond the “Bells of Ouseley,” to find the right bank edged by what plain prose must belittle as a wooded rise, on whose top, pleasant rather than proud, stands a stately mansion that, in the course of its chequered history, grew into a banyan grove of buildings built in vain. Cooper’s Hill was in Victorian times the property of one of those meteoric financiers flashing across the sky of British commerce, the same who in London built for himself a house so large that no one ever lived in it. Then the place made itself a new name as a college for the Indian engineering service; but this institution came to be uprooted, and its halls passed into private occupation, after for a time standing desolate, as those of Ossian’s Balclutha, while there was question what to do with them. An academy for horse-marines, a week-end club for members of Parliament, a training-school for county councillors, are suggestions that could be made; but, to my mind, a truly Liberal Government might have endowed Cooper’s Hill as an asylum for minor poets.

This first though not foremost of Surrey heights is surrounded by fair and famous scenes to inspire the Denhams of our generation. Below it, on the Berkshire edge, lies Beaumont, once home of Warren Hastings, now a Roman Catholic Eton. Behind it opens Englefield Green, a village of much gentility, which has housed many well-known persons, from Louis Napoleon to the late R. H. Hutton of the Spectator; and it is clearly the “Dinglefield” of Mrs. Oliphant’s Neighbours on the Green. Near this, at the Bishops Gate of Windsor Park, is the hamlet where Shelley wrote his Alastor, and did not let his views of Church or State be charmed by the sight of Windsor Castle that here rises royally into prospect. Windsor Park is mainly in Berkshire; yet, keeping down the woods and rhododendron walks on the east side, we should come upon Virginia Water, overflowing at one end into Surrey, which may claim a share of the royal demesne, and a large one of the wider bounds once known as Windsor Forest.

From the Thames slope of Cooper’s Hill, where “Denham’s Seat” makes a view-point across the river, expands a wider landscape over the flat fields of Bucks and Middlesex, watered by the branching Colne. The spire to the north marks a village known on maps as Wyrardisbury, but to men as Wraysbury; then a mile beyond, across the railway, comes Horton, home of Milton’s youth. But the scene of greatest fame lies in the foreground, at our feet, for this wide riverside meadow, degraded to a race-course as it has been, is Runnymede, on which King John was forced to sign the first great charter

of our liberties. Some would have that historic stage to be Magna Charta island off the west end of the mede, where a stone is shown as the table of signing; but no Surrey patriot can allow such a pretension on the part of Buckinghamshire, while it may be that the king had his quarters at the Benedictine Nunnery of Ankerwyke on the other bank, if not at the old house in Staines pretending to that honour. It is remarkable what a number of places in many parts of England claim to have housed or lodged a so unpopular and worthless sovereign.

Above Runnymede, dropping off the ridge of Cooper’s Hill, one may come down to the pleasant town of Egham, its one long street lying a mile back from the river; but its accretions straggle on towards the bank, where the tow-path leads by havens of boating men and “Anglers’ Rests” to the bridge of Staines. This is a Middlesex town, the older part of it also lying back from the Thames, upon the Colne, whose damp flats form a somewhat dreary background, not enlivened by the banks of a huge reservoir for thirsty London. But Staines has a name on the Thames through its ancient stone, marking the limit of London City’s jurisdiction, thirty-six miles up the river. There may be Londoners who never heard of this stone, which made the goal of a Lord Mayor’s progress eighty years ago, to be celebrated by his Lordship’s chaplain in a most amusing style, by no means meant to be amusing. Having spared the reader Akenside’s inscription for the column on Runnymede, I have half a mind to inflict upon him some account of this expedition, as raised to all the dignity of history, and all the interest of exploration, in the reverend gentleman’s now rare volume. But it might seem too like ancient history to a generation of impatient readers, who know the Lord Mayor’s State barge only from the heading of their Illustrated London News, and perhaps do not know how the Corporation’s Admiralship has passed into the farther reaching hands of the Thames Conservancy. “Suffice it, therefore, to say that though the party were three successive days—two of which included fifteen hours—upon the water; yet, such was the fine and ever-varying nature of the home scenery around them, which was itself sufficient to engross the attention, as the Thames made its azure sweeps round slopes of meadow land; so diversified were the occupations of reading, working, and conversation—conversation which, always easy and intelligent, was often such as to discover memories containing ample registers of miscellaneous snatches and fragments of sentiments, both in prose and verse, which were sometimes applied with considerable tact and address to passing scenes; so well and interestingly, in short, were the several successive hours filled up”—that one must break off the chronicler’s long-winded sentence with his own admission, that “it would be difficult and tedious to detail all the particulars” of that civic voyage.

I do not aspire to emulate this author’s stilted gait on the trip from Staines to London, but I invite the reader to plod with me along the tow-path; that, as he is aware, will pass from one side to another, a matter hardly understood by an observant American writer, who made note how “one shore of the Thames, sometimes the right, sometimes the left, it seems, belongs to the public.” From the Bells of Ouseley to Staines Bridge the tow-path has been in Surrey; now it crosses to the pleasant river front of the town, the Surrey side being blocked by private paradises and boating-houses. To Chertsey, the next Surrey town, we might, indeed, cut across by a road that at one point comes close to the river; but the more inviting way is the path on the Middlesex bank, and at one of the locks we may have the luck to catch a steamboat plying in summer between Kingston and Oxford on a river, of which that old poet might say more emphatically in our generation:—

The riches of the shore here are chiefly in trim gardens and flat fields, by which the tow-path leads windingly, yet spares us Father Thames’ most wayward aberration, the mile-long loop of Penton-Hook, across the mouth of which we cut by the lock in a couple of minutes. Before reaching this from Staines, is passed on the opposite bank a surprising collection of bungalows, shanties, and tents, one of those settlements of genteel gipseying that have grown up on the banks in our time. Beyond the lock, we come to the Middlesex village of Laleham, in whose churchyard lies Matthew Arnold, born here in his father’s pre-Rugby days. Below this leafy place, beginning to be overlaid by builders’ plans, road and tow-path run together beside Laleham Park towards Chertsey Bridge, the Surrey bank being fringed by willow copses, much sought for floating flirtations and picnic teas. But to reach the older part of Chertsey, one had better cross by the ferry at Laleham, and take a mile of straight hedgerow path over the Abbey Mead, passing a crumbling fragment, all that now represents what was once the richest of Surrey’s monasteries, as it was the first founded in the county by St. Augustine.

Nowadays there is not much air of ecclesiastical dignity about Chertsey, rather of quiet prosperity in the long thoroughfare that crooks itself nearly two miles from the station to the bridge, connecting the new quarters that have sprung up at either end. The lion of this straggling town is the house on the right side of the way up to the station, marked by a tablet recording how “here the last accents flowed from Cowley’s tongue”; but such a relic has gone down in value since the days when Abraham Cowley ranked among the first flight of British poets. A name more familiar to this generation is that of Charles James Fox, who had his country retreat at St. Ann’s Hill. Another notable neighbour of Chertsey was Thomas Day, author of Sandford and Merton. About three miles behind the town, past Botley’s Park, Potter’s Park, and Ottershaw, the now rich woods of Anningsley make a monument to that earnest philanthropist, who fixed his home here on poor sandy land that he might give employment in improving it by plantations. His death came about through too consistent carrying out of his principle that animals can always be managed by kindness; he was killed by being thrown from an unbroken colt; then the wife whom he had chosen with so much scrupulosity, after pupils trained for that post had failed to pass his examination of trying ordeals, showed herself a worthy helpmeet by spending the rest of her life in heart-broken seclusion.

Pleasant walks may be taken by those parks to the Basingstoke Canal and the valley of the Wey, a few miles behind Chertsey. But no one who has an hour to spare here should miss the ascent of St. Ann’s Hill, which lies a short mile to the west on the road leading out near the railway station. The grounds, with their grotto, “Temple to Friendship” and such like, are of course private; but at the “Golden Grove,” notable by a tree bearing up a platform in front, one can turn off the road for a public path leading over the hill. Though only about 200 feet high, this richly-wooded eminence looks far over the Thames valley; and through the foliage at the top vistas have been cut framing such prominent landmarks as Windsor Castle, the Holloway College, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Richmond Hill, the Crystal Palace, and the Great Wheel at Earl’s Court, till it had ceased to obtrude itself on so many points of view to the west of London. There are traces of an old encampment that gave this hill the forgotten name of Aldbury; and hidden among the trees is a “Nun’s Well,” from which perhaps it was re-christened after a now vanished chapel of St. Ann.

A couple of miles above Chertsey, between the Thames and the big village of Addlestone, swells up Woburn Park, its grounds once celebrated as a ferme ornÉe, but now a nursery of the young idea, where prospect-hunters are out of bounds. Round it one may take a pleasant path from Chertsey Bridge, leading over the green level of Chertsey Mead, and curving into the Weybridge Road, where it crosses a Bourne not far from the canalised course of the Wey. This path cuts off the bends of the Thames tow-path, which as far as Weybridge keeps the Middlesex bank. But if one were going from Chertsey Bridge to Walton Bridge, more than half the distance is saved by taking the fairly straight road through Shepperton in Middlesex. Travellers on wheels are willing to give a wide berth to the Thames bendings, cyclists indeed being warned off the tow-path; and the modern Great Western Road, like the old Roman way to Silchester, does not touch Surrey till the bridge at Staines has been crossed.

Thus Weybridge, lying off direct roads, entangled between the Thames and the Wey, seems not so well known as it deserves to be. Richmond excepted, I declare this the pleasantest riverside town in Surrey. It stretches roomily from the river to the railway, with one end in the lush meadowland of the Thames valley, and the other rising on the heath and pine-wood scenery so characteristic of West Surrey. I once met a honeymoon couple from the North who were pining among the tame richness of England, but their spirits revived at the “Hand and Spear,” near Weybridge station, which I prescribed as a tonic in their case. Here, behind the railway, begins the wooded ridge of St. George’s Hill, the top of which was an ancient camp, and one of CÆsar’s supposed stations in Surrey. Nearly the whole of this long height is a private enclosure, but it has been liberally set open to ramblers who will do no mischief. In a central glade among the pine woods is even provided a Swiss ChÂlet for refreshments; then a little south of this, where

the ridge makes a sudden drop, opens a clear and wide view to the Downs. The southern gate of the park lets one out on a road between Byfleet and Cobham; and the winding tracks through the woods lead down on either side to varied scenes, on the west the mazes of the Wey, straightened out by its canalised arm, on the east an expanse of common and fir woods falling to the alluvial bed of the Mole.

It is no wonder, then, that many Londoners—too many, says the last comer—have built themselves villas on the dry upper slopes of Wey bridge, while the older part of the town on the river bank is better known to transient visitors of aquatic tastes. A link between the two quarters is the spire rising near the bridge over the Wey to mark the oldest part of all. The rebuilt church contains a tomb by Chantrey for the Duchess of York, whose residence at Oatlands is also commemorated by a pillar on the Green, a second-hand monument that once ornamented the Seven Dials of St. Giles. Another royalty, Louis Philippe, for a time found sepulchre in the Roman Catholic chapel here, till the bones of this exiled family might be removed to their native land.

Oatlands Park borders Wey bridge on the east. If the general reader be surprised that Drayton, in his account of what Milton styles “Royal-towered Thames” couples Oatlands with Hampton Court and Richmond, that is because readers with so much to read forget how this, too, has been a palace, which made one stage of King Charles’s long journey to the scaffold; and his youngest son, as born here, was Henry of Oatlands. In the park stood two yew trees, some hundreds of yards apart, between which legend draws its long bow in measuring by them a feat of Queen Bess’s archery. The mansion is now an hotel; and the grounds have been encroached on for building plots. A century ago it belonged to George IV.’s military brother, that Duke of York whom Charles Greville, in his critical way, calls the only one of the royal princes bearing the character of an English gentleman; and he touches on the Duchess’s extraordinary love of dogs, parrots, and monkeys. The graves of her hundred pets still ornament the park, which has also to show such a costly grotto as was dear to Georgian “improvers.” Another feature of these grounds is the Broadwater Lake, representing a former course of the Thames. The tongue of land beyond was once Middlesex, but by alteration of the channel has been thrown into Surrey.

To this side the tow-path crosses at Weybridge, and one can double the distance to Walton by following the bends of the river opposite Shepperton and Halliford. Near Walton Bridge is reached a scene of historic note, for Cowey Stakes here has been taken to be the ford by which CÆsar crossed the Thames on his pursuit of Cassivelaunus. What will be more obvious to the wayfarer is a very modern encampment of tents, with other shelters and conveniences, including a floating bath, which has sprung up of late years near the Middlesex end of Walton Bridge. The town of Walton-on-Thames stands mainly back from the river, its station being a mile behind. It has no such wild background as St. George’s Hill, but lies pleasantly mixed up with groves and parks, and seems a snug place of retreat for quiet-minded Londoners. Walton Church was the scene of Elizabeth’s cautiously Anglican view of the Sacrament:—

This church boasts the tomb of Lilly the astrologer, and monuments by Chantrey and Roubiliac; then near it is to be seen the house of the regicide Bradshaw, now split up into cottages. In the churchyard is buried “bright, broken Maginn,” Thackeray’s “Captain Shandon,” who set so many tables in a roar.

But the literary and historic memories of such places may not much concern those who have come out for a day on the river. Each of these Thames-side towns is a haven for escaped Londoners, often familiar with little more of them than the boat-houses on their banks, and the inns, some of which seem too eager to make their hay while the sun shines. Each has its fleet of boats, moored thickly together in whole rafts, its clubs, and its annual gala day of the local regatta. On a fine Sunday or Saturday afternoon every lock is packed with youth and beauty, set off by gay colours and airy costumes. Every reach within railway ride of London may be found lively with a jumble of craft of all sorts, from Canadian canoes to Venetian gondolas, tiny yachts, skiffs, tubs, outriggers, punts, ferry-boats, eights, fours, “dongolas,” “randans,” pairs, rowed, poled, tugged, towed, or idly moored, like the big house-boats whose cramped luxury gives a lazy refuge from cares and taxes. Among all these the barges of business move like surly and clumsy tyrants; and water-scorching machines sweep through the fluttered crowd as wolves in a sheepfold. Steamers and motor-launches have replaced the State barges in which Lord Mayors and such-like used to progress in the days when to be a “jolly young waterman” was more of a trade than a pleasure.

were winged by mercenary arms. It seems well that the golden or gilded youth of our generation are more active, taking their amusement moult tristement, as might be judged by an unsympathetic foreigner. An English writer has found fault with Thames boats as “built for woman and not for man, for lovely woman to recline, parasol in one hand and tiller ropes in the other, while man—inferior man—pulled and pulled and pulled as an ox yoked to the plough.” But that is hardly fair now that girls boyishly take their turn at the oar, even exhibiting the spectacle of whole galleys deftly womanned by crews of water-Amazons. The only right left to man here is the panting and perspiring toil of the tow-path, to which he bends devotedly like “the captives depicted on Egyptian monuments with cords about their necks.” Such slavery may well be preferred to the aid of those exorbitant and foul-mouthed hirelings who infest the river banks in search of a job, which to Edwin makes a labour of love, so Angelina be drawn along cool, at ease, grateful, and admiring. With his dynamic energy, contrast the contemplative, perhaps misanthropic, and apparently celibate joys of the angler, throned upon his punt or posted on the bank, as he has been ever since Pope’s day—

Below Walton, the Thames winds quietly on between banks that again suggest a quotation from Denham—

The panorama is one of green meadows, garden grounds, shady islands, cuts and creeks, Sunbury Lock, boat-houses, inns, water-works, racecourse enclosures, and hints of villages lying back from the river; but Hampton Church stands out on the bank; then a string of islets brings us on to the mouth of the Mole opposite Hampton Court. This palace of popular resort, with its galleries, courts, gardens, and park avenues, its barracks, its many houses of entertainment, and its terminus of London tramways, is in Middlesex; but its station is across the bridge in Surrey; and if one wanted matter to fill a few pages, one might fairly include a description of its treasures. But so much has to be said of the Surrey side, that we had better pass on with one look at this monument of old England, touched with graces of continental taste.

The tow-path, that has been in Surrey since we left Weybridge, again crosses to pass with princely breadth under the wall of Hampton Park. But on the Surrey side also, we are not kept far from the river, for, after a diversion through Molesey, the road comes to the bank by the old church of Thames Ditton; then, through the outskirts of Long Ditton, it joins the much-wheeled Ripley road, which in front of Surbiton becomes a waterside esplanade beseeming that most respectable London colony that has the name of being affected by west-end tradesmen and the like “warm” citizens. Such, at least, is the reproach brought against it by satirical scribblers, who perhaps live at Peckham or Camden Town, envious at heart of Surbiton’s social amenities as described in the instructive life of “Mr. Bailey Martin.” Another novelist suggests how Surbiton wants nothing but a pier to look like a seaside resort, with its parade, bandstand, and so forth, along which, by two miles of houses, we come into the ancient borough of Kingston, that makes a core for so much villadom.

As an independent town, this, with its excrescences, Surbiton, Norbiton, Malden, is second for size in Surrey, overgrown only by Croydon; and Kingston has also a Middlesex Lambeth in its transpontine quarter, Hampton Wick. It is so far the county seat that the Hall of the County Council has been built here; while it no longer shares with Guildford and Croydon the dignity of assize town. There was a time when it might boast of higher rank, for in the tenth century the Saxon kings were crowned at this Rheims or Scone of South England. It seems always to have been a place of importance through its ford, then through a bridge which was long the next one above London Bridge. When a hostile attack on London failed from the Southwark side, the enemy had nothing for it but to march all the way round by Kingston, as Sir Thomas Wyat did to little purpose. In the Civil War a

bridge of boats came to be thrown across the river at Putney. The first movement of this war was about Kingston, a place worth seizing as key of the road to Portsmouth, so in turn held by Royalists and Roundheads; and almost the last sharp encounter between the two parties was a running fight that ended in the outskirts of the town. London citizens of that day must have had stirring news, when more than once they heard of hostile forces so near their gates as at Hampton and Hounslow. The wayfarer on Wimbledon Common is still apt to be startled by the sight of train-bands slinking in knots from copse to hollow; but these are only our Boy Scouts practising the devices of modern war; and presently, we know, they will go home in peace to their tea. It was otherwise when Captain Hew-Agag-in-pieces, or the doughty Sir Hudibras, could not take his family on a trip up the river without the risk of falling into the hands of malignant Philistines, its banks a paradise lost to Milton, while perhaps Denham or Herrick might have safely ventured—

Near the end of Kingston Bridge, now crossed by a tramway, stands the restored Church, which has the distinction of being one of the largest in Surrey, and contains old monuments, besides a show of modern memorial windows. The chapel where the Saxon kings were crowned has been destroyed; but the rough stone on which they traditionally sat is reverently enclosed in the market-place for all to see but not to touch. Could it speak for itself, this might tell strange tales of forgotten superstition, like that other boulder in Westminster Abbey, uneasy seat of Scottish kings, that must have travelled so far by land and sea since it made Jacob’s pillow. By a recently “restored” statue of Queen Anne before the Town Hall, Kingston also shows special devotion to the memory of that truly dead sovereign. Such are “the memorials and the things of fame that do renown this city”—as it might claim to style itself; and the market-place whereabout they stand makes often a lively and picturesque scene, on which the quasi-cockney mingles with the true rustic.

Kingston is a headquarter of Thames boating, and its population must to a considerable extent be made up of such “Jacks” as are the camp-followers of this exercise. It is also fortunate in lying close to three royal parks that have all become practically public pleasure-grounds. The pleasantest way down the river is by the high edge of Richmond Park; but below also one may take the tow-path, now on the Surrey bank; while a middle way is the road passing over Ham Common. The Middlesex bank is almost entirely taken up by private grounds; though at Hampton Wick there is a tea-garden resort reached by a path from the road behind. In the secluded back-water opening here there used to be a capital bathing station, the nearest to London; but this has now been closed by the excessive modesty of suburban senators; and not till the shades of dusk may the youth of Teddington sally forth to make a noisy Arcadia of the tow-path. Teddington lies in Middlesex, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham, where the spread of villadom has not yet wholly overwhelmed market-gardens, like that cultivated lovingly but at a loss by the author of Lorna Doone.

At Teddington (Tide-end-town?) is the last rushing weir, and the Thames current is for the last time bridled by a lock, not counting that half-lock at Richmond. Henceforth, without ceasing to be a pleasure-stream, it attends more strictly to business, and its voyagers have to reckon with the tide. Above Teddington, the river is frequented rather by more or less practised oarsmen; but on the Richmond reach we may find a larger proportion of land-lubbers splashing manfully as best they can; and on public holidays, it might be safer not to mingle in the throng of lasses and lads who are trying their prentice hands at aquatic pursuits, prices being then raised as the standard of experience is lowered.

All the building is still on the Middlesex side, where Twickenham has pleasant homes to show, as also celebrated ones like Pope’s Villa; but the main part of the town lies hidden away behind Eel Pie Island. The Surrey tow-path is bare, but for Ham House, whose famous avenue, beyond Twickenham Ferry, opens on to the bank, here a broad bowery sward, with room for all the engaged couples of Petersham and Richmond to keep aloof from each other. Eyes less preoccupied will be attracted to the trees and lawns of Orleans House and Marble Hill across the river, then arrested by the noble brow of Richmond Hill that seems to bar our way on.

Richmond, of old known as West Sheen, was once a royal residence, and its Green shows a fragment of the palace in which Elizabeth and other sovereigns died. Most of Richmond’s antiquity has disappeared, down to the renowned Cobweb Cellar, swept away two or three years ago, beneath a rebuilt tavern; but much of the place still wears a dignified look of Georgian old fashion, borne out by the narrow, bent main thoroughfare that on a Saturday night will be more crowded than the Strand. The newer streets above are quiet and genteel enough; but all the quarter between the station and the front of busy boat-houses lays itself out for strangers brought by four railway lines from London; and the streets here are thickly set with houses of entertainment of every rank, including confectioners to provide the “maids of honour” cheese-cakes that are at Richmond what whitebait is or was at Greenwich. These two places long made rival goals of London junketings up and down the river; but automobiles now ply farther afield, carrying their best customers past the Richmond hotels, so that the renowned “Star and Garter” had to close its doors, to be reconstructed as a hospital for disabled soldiers.

The great sight here, of course, is Richmond Hill, to which a gradual ascent leads from the bridge, or from the bank above the boat-houses a steeper one up the slope laid out as a beautiful public garden, its highest part a shady terrace, commanding that rich landscape over which gazed Jeanie Deans, in her heart perhaps preferring the view from Arthur’s Seat. “A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories.” Flocks and herds, indeed, are not so visible in our day; but the hundred barks and skiffs seen by Scott, may appear multiplied by tenfold on the reach of the river extending at our feet.

Passing on before the transformed “Star and Garter,” and through the gate of the Park, from this corner of it one has the same outlook—

Richmond Park is nearly nine miles in circuit, at its Robin Hood Gate almost adjoining the wilder expanse of Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. It is a royal demesne, but by degrees, one of them a “village Hampden” lawsuit, it has come to be treated as a public pleasure-ground. Quite recently King Edward crowned former concessions by giving up game-preserving in the many thickets that shade its swards, stocked with herds of not too shy deer. In a central hollow are ponds that serve for skating. Every part is now open except the enclosures of several residences within the park, which are tenanted by royal favour. The White Lodge on the farther side was the youthful home of the Princess of Wales. Pembroke Lodge, near the Richmond Gate, was granted as retreat to the veteran statesman Earl Russell, having originally been built for that Countess of Pembroke young George III. loved in vain. On a mound here Henry VIII. is said to have watched for the rocket from Anne Boleyn’s scaffold on Tower Hill, as signal of his being a not disconsolate widower.

On the riverside below Richmond Green, for public recreation is also given up the old Deer Park, over which the Chinese pagoda beacons us towards Kew Gardens. The Observatory here has now, through disturbance caused by the vicinity of electric lines, lost its function of testing delicate instruments. Along the road by the Lion Gate of the Gardens, Richmond and Kew almost run into each other. As usual, it is twice as far by the pleasanter path on the bank, which passes outside the Park and Gardens, with views across the river upon St. Margaret’s, then on Isleworth, on the grounds of Sion House, the home of an English Duke, but at Lisbon its keys are or long were kept by the sisterhood banished hence at the Reformation; then on the wharves and slums of Brentford, county town of Middlesex, where the Brent makes shamefaced confluence as a canal. Thus we come to the new Kew Bridge and Kew Green, which still keeps a look of the dignity it wore as a favourite residence of George III.; even in our own day it has housed a branch of the royal family at Cambridge Cottage. The place is a great resort of his present Majesty’s subjects, for whose refreshment appear many tea-houses and taverns. The grounds of Kew Palace are now thrown into the gardens, that,

open at all reasonable hours, make such a famous sight. Every Londoner knows the Palm-Houses, the Botanical Houses, the show of aquatic plants, and the gallery of Miss North’s paintings from all over the world. But what many a visitor may pass unnoticed is what Richard Jefferies judged the best show of all, the enclosure called the Herbaceous Ground, “a living dictionary of English wildflowers,” to which “the meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain and the woodland, the sea shore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has sent its peculiar representatives,” so as here to present an essence of wild nature, and an epitome of the hills, woodland banks, and hedgerows of Surrey.

Thomson poetically speaks of Richmond as the place where “silver Thames first rural grows”; but in prosaic fact the Surrey bank below Kew may often be found a bushy solitude, sometimes a sloppy one, when overflowed by high tides; and on the other side, the villas of Gunnersbury once passed, the advance of Chiswick is masked by trees and market-gardens as yet occupying a tongue of flat land, round which the river makes a southward bend. The tow-path takes us on beside Mortlake, reached at its “White Hart” haven of London omnibuses, and beneath the railway bridge, so crowded when this is the goal of the University boat-race. Did one care to explore Mortlake, in the Roman Catholic cemetery, behind the station, would be found an extraordinary modern tomb, a huge stone tent decorated with crescents and stars more conspicuous than crosses, beneath which Sir Richard Burton rests after his many travels. In the church is buried Dr. Dee, that “last of the magicians,” who was indeed one of the first of our mathematicians. Farther back Richmond Park is gained through the amenities of Sheen, now dwindling before the builder; but there is still a pretty patch of Sheen Common.

The river front of Mortlake almost touches that of Barnes. Here it is the turn of Surrey to throw out a flat promontory of market-gardens, across the neck of which one can make a short-cut to Putney or to Barnes Common. Keeping the bank, one has rather a dull walk round by the ferry to Chiswick Church, then opposite Chiswick Mall and the old-fashioned riverside front of Hammersmith, where the bridge would bring one fairly into London. The London County Council’s scheme to run regular steamers so far did not command the success it deserved; but in the fine season ply occasional excursion Argoes, holding on up to Kew or still farther.

The river now becomes imprisoned in water-works, wharves, and piers; and at low tide it reveals unlovely stretches of mud below the scrubby withs that bind this shorn Samson’s writhings. Yet still, besides craft of business, it may be found alive with boats, including police-cruisers commissioned against boys surreptitiously bathing from a bit of rubbish-strewn wilderness on the Middlesex bank, that in a few years will be overflowed by the tide of houses creeping up behind. Meanwhile, why not leave those unshamed urchins alone, whose aquatic gambols till lately made a cooling sight from the opposite tow-path? One or two of them were drowned every year, it is said; but the sum of life saved by our grandmotherly councillors must fall far below the amount of health, cleanliness, and cheerfulness stolen on such waste spots; and it might well be considered what will become of this country a generation after its youth has been schooled and policed out of exulting to risk life, limb, and skin.

I forget what last-century autobiographer mentions a party of schoolfellows landing to bathe a little higher up in the grounds of Brandenburgh House, then occupied by the Margravine of Anspach, and being surprised by her unserene Highness in person, who, armed with a riding whip, took the young Adams at sore disadvantage. This vivacious Amazon had been widow of Lord Craven, who built another house, called Craven Cottage, just below the osier-fronted waste at present awaiting reclamation. The Craven Cottage grounds have been fortified and garrisoned by a club that carries on the business of drawing enormous crowds to bet and roar over the performances of professional athletes, their din suggesting another hint as to the welfare of the next generation. But we may take hope to see how manfully the striplings of Putney and Hammersmith ply oar and sculls in what else might be their hours of ease; as everywhere within reach of the capital, that sympathetic visitor, Mr. John Burroughs, could admire “young athletic London, male and female, rushing forth as hungry for the open air and the water as young mountain herds for salt.”

Ramblers on the Surrey side get a tantalising glimpse of expensive pastimes, for the tow-path leads them beside the grounds of Barn Elms, home of more than one notability in the last three centuries, now arena of the Ranelagh Club’s sports. At the end of this enclosure is bridged what looks like a muddy back-water, but is the mouth of the Beverley Brook, so idyllic as it flows by Wimbledon Common to Roehampton; then beyond we come to the boat clubs and taverns of Putney, facing the grounds of Fulham Palace, now turned into a public park along the river wall.

Putney is a suburb of much respectability, rising on to heights of gentility at the back, and merging with the super-gentility of Roehampton’s palatial villas. In future this birthplace of Gibbon may also be known as abode of the poet Swinburne. At present it has an annual hour of clamorous fame as starting-place of the University boat-race. In the past it made an appearance in history as headquarters of Cromwell’s army during the autumn of 1647, while negotiations went on with the Parliament at Westminster on one hand, and with the King at Hampton Court on the other. The church, then used as a council hall, has one fine old feature in the chantry of Bishop West; and the way in which it faces the corresponding tower of Fulham has provoked a legend of their having been built by two giant sisters, who, as in the case of St. Catherine’s and St. Martha’s Chapel near Guildford, are credited with using one hammer between them, which they flung backwards and forwards across the river.

Putney, as yet unfettered by tramways, is closely linked with London by motor-buses plying all the way to northern and eastern suburbs, as well as by trains of more than one line. But now the tow-path fails us, and we must take ship to keep an eye on the Surrey shores. A little below, the river will touch the four-mile-circle from Charing Cross. Once more it is bordered by trees and lawns, but these belong to Hurlingham Club and to Wandsworth’s new park; and it has far to go before reaching green fields again on the shores of Kent and Essex. Shades of its prison-house close in upon it fast, beginning with the group of grimy wharves and mills amid which ends the bedraggled Wandle, turned to many a task from its source to its mouth. The old buildings of Wandsworth have been vanishing like the Mayoralty of Garratt Green behind it; but it has still some quaint nooks, and the true Surrey feature of its open Common.

The next steamboat stage is by Battersea Reach, where it takes an artist’s eye to catch the points of beauty dear to Turner. Battersea Park faces the restored dignity of Chelsea. A huge railway arsenal covers the site of those Nine Elms that have long gone to make coffins for the dancers in Vauxhall Gardens. Doulton’s pottery works look across to the Tate Gallery. Lambeth Palace is passed, then St. Thomas’s Hospital stares from wakeful eyes at the House of Parliament. Below Westminster Bridge, Surrey is to give a site for the HÔtel de Ville of our County Council; but as yet the bank here makes a shabby contrast to the clubs and hotels of the Middlesex side. St. Paul’s looks down upon Southwark, which has now a Cathedral Church of its own in St. Saviour’s, with its old monuments and new memorial windows. This lies at the end of London Bridge, beyond which the tanneries of Bermondsey have hidden the very site of its once famous Abbey, opposite the Tower of London. The last Surrey parish is Rotherhithe, where Captain Lemuel Gulliver could find a pleasant retreat after his voyages, when it was known as Redriff; but now the name of its Cherry Orchard pier seems a mockery, till one searches out the groves and garden-beds of Southwark Park, hidden behind a front of wharves and warehouses. A dull change this from the green meads of Egham or the slopes of Richmond. But a painter in words, too early lost to his Surrey home, George W. Steevens, can show colour, life, and romance in those avenues of dingy buildings and naked masts.

Always the benign sun-and-smoke clothes them with softness and harmony; it softens their vermilion advertisements to harmony with the tinted azure of the sky and the vague grey-brown of the water. Brutal business built them, to ship and unship, and be as crass and crude as they would, but the smoke turns them into the semblance of sleepy monsters basking by the river they love. Presently the tall sky-line breaks and drops; let in between the monsters appears a terrace of tiny riverside houses, huddled together as in a miniature. There is a tiny tavern with a plank-built terrace rising on piles out of the water, a tiny shop all aslant, a tiny brown house with a pot-belly of a bow-window. It all babbles of Jack and Poll, of crimps and tots of rum, and incredible yarns in the bar-parlour. Next, between the dusky wharves, an Italian church-tower soars up out of a nest of poor houses; the sun catches its white face and transfigures it. Then, the dearest sight of all—ships appearing out of the land, fore and main and mizzen, peak and truck, halliards and stays, and men like flies furling top-gallant sails above the roofs of London. As we open the region of the docks we are in a great city of ships—big steamers basking lazily with their red bellies half out of water, frantic spluttering tugs, placid brown-sailed barges, reckless banging lighters—and behind all this, clumps and thickets and avenues of masts and spars and tackle stretching stretching infinitely on every side. The houses have melted all away, and London is become a city of ships.