no other funds than those which are thus acquired.

Proceeding up the Thames from Windsor and Eton, towards Maidenhead, Marlow, and Henley, we approach that part of the river which is universally allowed to be the most lovely of all its course. From Cotteswold down to the sea it presents no scenes equal in rural loveliness to these. Its banks, if not lofty, are high enough to be imposing, and are altogether sylvan and beautiful, offering, it is true, no rocks, no mountains, no torrents, to the gaze of the traveller, but, instead, pellucid waters, verdurous hills and solemn woodlands, with here and there glimpses of waving corn-fields and pasture lands dotted with cattle. Here at all seasons may be seen the Eton scholars, fishing, or rowing, or bathing, as the weather invites, and many perchance, like their predecessor the old and now neglected poet, Phineas Fletcher, learning to "weave the rhyme." Fletcher, the author of "The Purple Island," a poem upon the anatomy of the human frame, and a remarkable specimen of talents misapplied, wrote several lyrical pieces upon the pleasures of angling. He was bred at Eton, and thus, in his first Piscatory Eclogue, describes the pleasures of the school-boys there in the days of Elizabeth.

When the raw blossom of my youth was yet
In my first childhood's green enclosure bound,
Of Aquadune I learned to fold my net,

And spread the sail, and beat the river round,
And withy labyrinths in straits to set,

Or guide my boat where Thames and Isis' heir
By lowly Eton glides, and Windsor proudly fair.

There while our thin nets dangling in the wind,
Hung on our oar-tops, I did learn to sing,
Among my peers, apt words to fitly bind

In numerous verse; witness thou crystal spring
Where all the lads were pebbles wont to find,

And yon thick hazles that on Thames's brink
Did oft with dallying boughs, his silver waters drink.

Sailing leisurely upwards from Windsor and Eton, in a pleasure boat, of which plenty are to be had on hire, and tramping it sometimes upon footways, at the water side, we pass Monkey Island, and its fishing temple, erected by the third Duke of Marlborough, and adorned with grotesque figures of the animal from which the island takes its name, and arrive at the little village of Bray, in Berkshire, famous all over England for the accommodating vicar, who once resided in it. Some have imagined that the celebrated vicar was an Irishman, and incumbent of Bray, near Dublin; and others have supposed that he lived in the time of Charles II. Both these suppositions are erroneous, if we may rely, and there is no reason why we should not, upon the statements of

excellent old Fuller, who informs us, in his Worthies of England, that the vicar in question was the incumbent of Bray upon the Thames, and that he lived in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. He changed his religion according to the ascendency of the day a Protestant to please one government, a Catholic to please the next, and again Protestant to keep on good terms with the third; arguing all the time, that he was consistent and sincere to the one great fundamental maxim of his life, which was upon no terms, if he could help it, to part with his comfortable incumbency of Bray. The name of this astute and worldly-minded ecclesiastic, is said to have been Symon Symonds, and there is a well-known song upon his tergiversations.

On the right of the river are the waving woods of Taplow, hanging in picturesque beauty over the stream, and associated in our remembrance with the name of Elizabeth, who during the reign of her sister, passed some time in a sort of captivity in this place. There is a large oak-tree in the park, which popular tradition, fond of attributing the origin of favourite trees to favourite personages, maintains to have been planted by that princess.

About the year 1760, a singular cave adjoining the Thames was discovered at this place.

It was evidently not a natural hollow, but an artificial excavation, but when, by whom, and why it was formed, have never been explained. It is ten feet wide, and nineteen feet high, with an arched roof, and is situated on the declivity of a chalky hill.

The Thames is here crossed by the magnificent viaduct of the Great Western Railway, with its two fine arches, each of one hundred and twenty-eight feet span; and also by the more ancient bridge of Maidenhead, with its thirteen arches, both forming pleasing objects in the view. The scene from the latter, northwards, towards Marlow, merits the abundant admiration it has received.

Maidenhead is a clean, neat little town, now rising into some importance, from the vicinity of the railway station of the Great Western Company. Its name, according to Leland, was formerly South Allington, and by some it has been called South Ealington and Sudlington. The reason of the change to Maidenhead, or when the change took place, is not known. The town was incorporated about the middle of the fourteenth century, by Edward III, by the name of the guild of ten brothers and sisters of Maidenhithe, from which the present name of Maidenhead is derived. The adjacent common of Maidenhead Thicket, so called from

its having been at one time covered with wood, was noted during the seventeenth, and at the commencement of the eighteenth century, for the numerous highway robberies committed on it. It was here that the notorious Claude Duval sometimes distinguished himself, in teaching English footpads to rob politely, and where he himself occasionally, as Butler sings,

Made desperate attacks

Upon itinerant brigades

Of all professions, ranks, and trades,
On carriers' loads and pedlars' packs;
Making the undaunted waggoner obey,
And the fierce higgler contribution pay!