made already famous by a single line of Oxford's most exquisite singer, and no one, I think, can pass Bablock Hythe and its chopping rope,' without realising that from here onwards is classic ground-ground sacred to the Scholar Gipsy's quest.

Indeed poets, as is natural, have sent many garlands of verse floating down the river, from the days when Chaucer caught something of its alchemy as he walked in the Savoy gardens, and Spenser reflected its beauties in his 'Prothalamion,' to the more sophisticated era when Denham saw it from his Coopers Hill and wrote his two immortal lines, and Thomson watched its windings from Richmond. A goodly anthology could be formed of such scattered tributes, in which the verse of Pope, who lived on the river's bank at Twickenham, and Collins who bemoaned the loss of Thomson at Petersham, and Gray who wrought it into the texture of his tenuous output, would be reinforced by the praise of half a hundred poets down to the exquisite verse of our present Laureate. But here again, as in the case of prose, no one has dedicated to this fruitful subject a complete poem; for Peacock's 'Genius of the Thames' is but a philosophic dallying with the theme, and the Thames Lyrics' of Mortimer Collins, and the 'Lazy Lyrics' of Ashby Sterry, are but 'occasional' contributions to what lends itself specially to epic treatment.

When we arrive at Oxford we have come to what is, with the exception of London, the Thames's most glorious city. We have passed Rushey, dear to the angler, and Godstow, with its memories of Fair Rosamond, and are already bemused by the charm of that lovely city whose beauty nothing can spoil-neither construction, rebuilding (and much has become necessary), nor new ideas ; nothing. The collocation of college buildings, where the new work cannot wholly obliterate the old, is for so much in this charm, that there are those who see in the place a gradual accretion of architectural features, and fondly suppose that Oxford owes its attraction to these. To some extent it may be so. But rather would it seem that the past, dominant still, has here produced an aura which permeates the mind to the exclusion of more material things. And so, should every old stone of the city be replaced by something new, there still

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After Oxford there are few miles of the Thames which are not rich with national history. The first of such landmarks is Abingdon, one of the oldest and most interesting of river-side towns. In remote days its splendid Abbey dominated its fortunes, and even after e the Dissolution the town was lucky in obtaining its charter of incorporation from Queen Mary, who, as Lady of the Manor of the adjacent Radley, may supposed to have taken a personal interest in Abingdon.prov That place, during the Civil Wars, lived up to its ancient loyalty, and was held by Wilmot for the king. Fortune, however, turned against its defenders, and Essex made himself its master, and indeed held it, with Waller (who, by the way, destroyed the beautiful market cross) as its commandant, during the remainder of the struggle; although Rupert did once succeed in retaking and for a time holding the Abbey. Even to-day, when great changes have taken place there, Abingdon retains an old-world air; and is proud of it, as it was when, with an amazing unanimity, it voted against the railway to Oxford passing through it. All sorts of picturesque 'bits' are to be seen here; the bridge built in 1446; St Helen's Church, with its prominent spire and five aisles; St Nicholas, its west door instinct with the characteristic work of Norman artificers; and the Town Hall in which the influence of Inigo Jones is so obvious, although its actual designer is unknown.

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As the river winds round (although as oarsmen know there is a short cut by Culham) Sutton Courtney, that great group of trees called Wittenham Clump becomes insistent, so that for many a mile will it seem to be looking down on you, as you skirt the island by Long Wittenham, round by Clifton Hampden, with its church almost mirrored in the water, its red-brick bridge, and its adjacent Barleymow' of many river people's memory. If Dorchester be not actually on the Thames, it is so close by on the tributary Thame, that it may be regarded as one of the river's historic and picturesque sights. The Abbey, now so retired and restful, has had a great history; and if it seems strang

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to come upon it thus relegated in its old age to the position of a village church, it is still more surprising to remember that this tiny hamlet was once the centre of a powerful See whose jurisdiction extended over six dioceses; that Charles I held a Parliament here, and that in the 18th and early 19th century its large inns (now converted to other uses) were agog with the life and bustle of the full-blooded coaching days. Here, as at Abingdon and at other spots on the Thames, there is a monastic air, and one visualises the river in those far-off pre-lock days as dotted with ecclesiastical anglers intent on providing a satisfactory refection for Fridays. Indeed, one of the characteristics of the stream of pleasure, is the presence on its banks of the remains of abbatial buildings, and the names of Hurley and Medmenham, Bisham, Chertsey, Shene and Sion, recall the days when the river was an ecclesiastical highway on whose banks stood those significant structures of which but a few relics remain as subjects of study for the artist and the antiquary.

Still older memories attach to the district around Dorchester, for Sinodun Hill carries the mind back to the Danes, and Benson reminds us of its origin in the Bensington of an early Saxon tribe-the Bensingas. At Wallingford, however, we have a better-known and more outstanding landmark whose antiquity and past importance are but dimly adumbrated in the existing town. The Romans almost certainly had a settlement there, and at the Conquest, the Saxons were dominant in the castle whose grass-grown ramparts can still be traced. Wallingford has had vicissitudes, its convenience as a crossing-place for the river making it an objective to contending forces. The Danes sacked it; it withstood a siege from King Stephen; and its famous Treaty is a mark in English history.

All this district has the impress upon it of the historic past; even such small adjacent places as Moulsford, the two Stokes, and Crowmarsh Gifford, with Cholsey's beautiful cruciform church in the distance, where we stop for a while at the Beetle and Wedge or the Leather Bottel, recall the era when armed men rode over the narrow sturdy bridges and the clash of steel was heard hard by monastic fastnesses. Even Goring, which to-day is little more than a boat

man's paradise, to which, however, singularly few peris seek admittance, had its nunnery founded by Henry II, and still has its Norman church, no doubt the sole remains of the Augustinian establishment there; but Pangbourne (where the Pang enters the main stream) has become sophisticated, in spite of its pleasant collocation of red roofs; and what somebody once called the Seven Deadly Sins the row of houses in embrasures in the scoopedout chalk cliff, along the river front, have taken from it the picturesqueness of yester-year; a picturesqueness which, however, happily clings to its twin village, Whitchurch, on the opposite bank.

As if to make up for such sophistication, and to give us a glimpse of rurality unspoiled by man, before we arrive at the intolerable Reading Reach, we have Mapledurham, with its famous home of the Blounts, and Hardwick where Charles I played bowls. A third interesting house in this neighbourhood, lying high above the river, is Purley Hall, where Warren Hastings resided while awaiting his trial; but it is as much embedded in its trees as is Basildon Park, which we passed after leaving Goring, and interesting as having been the only mansion in the southern counties designed by that able 18th-century architect, Carr of York.

The historic interest present on the river-banks, full and significant as it is, is powerless to dominate the attractions of the stream itself. In the upper reaches the bird-life and the flora, the extraordinary variety of the scenery, here rising in massed woods, there stretching away over lush meadows, is, of course, pronounced. But here, as in more cultivated parts, the swans are a feature which add to the beauty of every reach. These birds are owned by the Crown and by two of the City Companies, the Vintners and the Dyers, and their yearly 'upping,' or 'hopping,' a corruption of the earlier form of the word, is a recognised custom. This ceremony consists in cutting nicks' in the beak. The royal swans are marked with five nicks, two lengthwise and three across; those of the City Companies with two only. It is, by the way, an interesting fact that the name of the tavern sign of 'The Swan with Two Necks,' was originally 'The Swan with Two Nicks.' In ancient days any one possessing what was called 'a game' of swans, was obliged to

mark each bird with a 'cygninote,' or brand. When the authorities are on a swan-upping expedition, their boats are decorated with the royal flag, or with those of the two city companies, the former being white with the king's crown and initials embroidered on it.

The presence of the swans (with an occasional black one among them) adds charm to Sonning's old bridge, and the White Hart garden full of roses, and even takes something from the dreariness of the three miles by Reading, where the Kennet joins the Thames, and the railway disfigures the landscape. In recent days, building on the Berkshire shore has helped to detract from the simple charm of the low-lying meadows about which the Loddon and St Patrick's stream meander; but even the presence of little bungalows cannot wholly take away the beauty of the exquisite reach which lies between Sonning and Shiplake Lock, and introduces us to the gracious curve sweeping by the Wargrave of Lord Barrymore's idiosyncrasies and the smooth lawns of Park Place, to Marsh Lock, and the dual landmarks of Henley Bridge and Henley Church Tower.

Henley, the oldest town in Oxfordshire, although its buildings belie the fact, is perhaps for obvious reasons the best known on the river. Indeed the name has come to indicate our great river festival rather than a place of residence and business; yet if it is gay and kaleidoscopic during one hectic week in the year, it is, for many, more attractive when merely its quiet self free from the invasion of noise. Henley Regatta has, however, left its indelible mark. Houses have arisen along the river bank; house-boats are still there (although not, perhaps, so insistently as in pre-motor days); and the air of activity which the place assumes during the week,' never quite deserts it. Phyllis Court is now a centre for dancing and tennis, and has forgotten its historic past; Friar Park with its amazing gardens is not the place it was when the ends of the earth were ransacked for its adornment. But Fawley Court remembers that it was built by Wren, and the Henley reach links it with Greenlands, whose associations with the Civil War and even with Roman days, have, however, been obliterated by the modern Italian architecture of its eponymous mansion.