212 A QUIET STROLL BY THE THAMES.

for fierce emotion or horribly grand scenery, but loved the
woods and the waters, the well-ordered loveliness of our
garden-counties, the soft murmurs and tranquil reaches
of the imperial river. The historical associations of our
river, the memories of our great men who haunted its
shores, or perhaps sung its praises, are as numerous and
as fruitful as those of any other stream; and though we
have not the ruined castles of the Rhine, we have palace
and tower, and countless homes, the fairest and best
ordered in the world, which to my mind are still better.
To me there is something peculiarly bright and soothing
about the varied aspects of our home river. I remember
once, when, amid long wanderings in towns, the thoughts
of the Thames would come to me with peculiar brightness
and power. There I should be literally by green pastures
and still waters. I will moor a boat beneath the trees,
I thought, and be hushed by the melody of swaying
boughs, and for hours idly pull along the woods that
gently feather down to the water's edge. There was
balm in the very thought; and, going to a quiet fishing
village, as is now my wont, I spent the whole of the live-
long spring day, when the lights and colours are most vivid
of all, floating on the Thames, storing up rest and energy
for London work.

This is Chiswick, only five miles from Hyde Park
Corner, and the huge city is stretching out its wide, far-
reaching arms, as if to overtake it. Chiswick is pecu-
liarly associated with great and brilliant memories. If I
were writing a chapter on churchyards, I think I might
meditate long in Chiswick churchyard, for indeed I know
of scarcely any other village churchyard that has such a
numerous and illustrious tenantry. And in the church
itself you may rove about amid monuments and brasses.
Many are the memories belonging to Chiswick; and as a
bookish man I have a grateful memory for those neat,
‘erisp books that issued from the Chiswick press, when
we hardly had a better printer than old Whittingham.
But Chiswick has a fund of memories of all kinds. Here
long lived the parents of Alexander Pope, the poet. Pope
might almost be called the Laureate of the Thames, unless
indeed the title should be claimed by James Thomson,
the author of “The Seasons.” This is the house where
Hogarth, the painter, lived so many years; it seems large,
but is not so large as it seems, being but narrow. Here
he brought his wife, Sir William Thornhill’s daughter;
Sir William, who misliked the match, little conjectured
that his son-in-law would prove a far more illustrious
artist than himself. That stable behind the house used
to be his studio, and there he painted his famous pic-
ture Finis, where he drew a broken palette, and never |
touched palette more. In the old days great families in |
town had seats at Chiswick or hereabouts, and if I had
time, I think I could find materials for stories of ro- |
mance and pathos therefrom. The Duke of Devonshire
has a magnificent villa here, as the Duke of Northum- |
| berland and the Duke of Buccleuch and the Duke of
| Sutherland have theirs farther up the stream. The other |
day I was reading an account of a banquet which the |
late Duke of Devonshire, the most magnificent of dukes,
| gave to the Queen and Prince Albert and the Emperor |
| Nicholas in the very palmiest days of the Victorian
Court. I promise you there was sparkle and glitter |
enough, and the description reads like a page borrowed |
from the Arabian Nights. And we have lost our “ blame- |
less prince,” and Czar Nicholas went to war with us, and

| died our foe, and our Court has never again been what it

once was. Such things has Time wrought. And there are,
in especial, two stately sorrowful memories connected with
this famous villa. Two famous Premiers have died here,
After many years Charles James Fox became Prime
Minister, though not holding the office of First Lord of
the Treasury. There was a young nobleman who one
day observed him stooping his shoulders in a peculiar
manner, and who thought to himself, “that was just the
way in which my father stooped before he sickened of the
dropsy and died.” Canning had only been Premier for a few
months, and the great prize seemed to vanish from his
grasp. Many of his great political friends, whose co-
operation seemed absolutely essential to him, had refused
to join him, and anxieties and care weighed heavily on
his sensitive temperament. He had to attend the Duke
of York’s faneral at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and
there caught cold, which his enfeebled constitution was
little able to withstand. They brought him to Chiswick,
and he was not able to leave, as inflammation of the lungs
had set in. The Prime Minister was not lodged in any
stately way, it was but a little room looking into a sort
of yard ; there were a few books on the shelf, and a small
gilt clock on the mantelpiece. Canning suffered greatly,
a faithful physician told him of his danger, and he was
not without good hope. However dissimilar in character
and policy Fox and Canning may have been, they re-
sembled each other in their eloquence, their genius, their)
love of scholarship and letters, and it is a singular lot that
thus brings them both to Chiswick at the last. Some|
of the greatest and most illustrious of the Court have}
watched the river in its Chiswick reach, not indeed as it
so lately was, busy and buoyant with the great race, for)
the races do not go very many years back, but in that
usual calm, silvery aspect which is the one aspect proper
to it, and which only we could bear for long.

Let us “take water,’ as they used to say in the old)
days. We are going on to Twickenham and thereabouts,|
where we will rest and return with the tide. We pass
Isleworth, we shoot beneath the graceful arch of Rich-|
mond Bridge; there is Richmond Hill, with the park
stretching beyond, and there are the Twickenham)
meadows. Close by Twickenham there is Lord Dysart’s
famous old house—Ham House; there was a splendid
river entrance here, which led. up through-a noble avenue
to the front gate, and almost opposite is the Due
d’Aumale’s grand house. We are close upon the famous
ait of Eel-pie island—the owner never eats eel-pie—one
of the famous isles or aits of the Thames, and hard by
the Twickenham tower with the gilded vane peeps forth.
It suddenly occurs to us that in those meadows close by
Lord Verisopht fought his fatal duel with Sir Mulberry
Hawk, in Charles Dickens’ story of “ Nicholas Nickleby,”
and I note the suggestion as giving a curious instance of
the way in which fiction seems to have more reality than
many real things. We will come back to Twickenham
presently, but we may as well do the usual thing and go
onwards to Teddington lock. Up to Teddington lock
the Thames is a tidal river; after that it is an inland
stream. We pass many a trim villa with its boat and
boat-house at the garden end. The citizens soon come
down by train and exchange the Metropolis for Arcadia.
I am afraid that in the rainy weather we have lately
had many of these pretty gardens have been almost over
whelmed by the spreading waters. Teddington lock is