crews, and to watch the blue-scarved oarsmen in and
out of the boathouses and the balcony windows. There is somewhere an air
of the sea-side about that stretch of gravel and open river bank; it is
the sunshine on the varnish of the boats, perhaps, or a smell of tar in
the wind, or of salt from the weeds that the tides leave dry; or is it
the banjo of the occasional nigger blacked to get pence from the waiting
crowd? On a September day a year or two ago, when Cambridge within a
week was to race Harvard, I saw on that strip of road one of the very
last of the genuine London Punch-and-Judy shows. Toby, of course, had
gone; dogs may sit no more in frills to cadge for coppers. But the rest
of it was correct enough; the chequered canvas, of the proper shade of
blue, draped the wooden frame discreetly at the right moment; there was
the old interval of suspense, the old, the piercing squeal, the
dexterous cock of the red legs over the balcony; the crocodile came and
the hangman, and the devil; I watched them all. So did two of the
Harvard crew, and did not know their luck. Nothing of English pride
stirred in the blood of those two stalwart young men; they walked off
even before the turn of the hangman.

East of Putney the river is a thoroughfare of London, and the names
along the Surrey side are London names. Lambeth Palace has already
included itself in Mrs. E.T. Cook's _Highways and Byways in London_, and
so has Vauxhall, and the church of St. Saviour's, Southwark, the finest
of all churches which once looked over Surrey fields. But Kennington, no
matter how near it lies to London omnibuses and London tube railways,
can never be anywhere but in Surrey; Kennington with its memories of the
'Forty-five, and the Chartists, and, a much stronger link with county
history than mere memories of the past, Kennington Oval, the visible,
flat, noble cricket ground which stands for the story of all Surrey
cricket of the past half century. The Oval is scarcely half a mile from
Vauxhall Bridge and the river; but it is the centre of the county for
those who watch Surrey cricket.

Once the Oval was part of Kennington Common; even in 1845 the solid road
which circles the ground was no more than a ditch and a quickset hedge.
But a hundred years before 1845! Cricket, even then, was a game in
Surrey. Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, and father of George III, was
introducing his favourite pastime to the nobles and the gentlemen. In
1737 Kent play