eve.

From its source, down through the Shires, past Oxford, Berks, and Bucks,
and finally between Middlesex, Surrey, and Essex, it ambles slowly but
with dignity. From Oxford to Henley and Cookham, it is at its best and
most charming stage. Passing Maidenhead, Windsor, Stains, Richmond,
Twickenham, and Hammersmith, and reaching Putney Bridge, it comes into
London proper, after having journeyed on its gladsome way through green
fields and sylvan banks for a matter of some hundred and thirty miles.

At Putney Bridge and Hammersmith is the centre of the fishing section, and
this was the background depicted by the artist who drew the wrapper for
the first serial issue of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."
Putney Church is seen in the distance, with its Henry VIII. Chapel, and in
the foreground Mr. Pickwick is found dozing in his traditional punt,--that
curious box, or coffin-like, affair, which, as a pleasure craft, is
apparently indigenous to the Thames.

Above this point the river is still:

_... "The gentle Thames_
_And the green, silent pastures yet remain."_

Poets have sung its praises, and painters extolled its charms. To cite
Richmond alone, as a locality, is to call up memories of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Walpole, Pope, Thomson, and many others whose names are known
and famed of letters and art.

Below, the work-a-day world has left its stains and its ineffaceable marks
of industry and grime, though it is none the less a charming and
fascinating river, even here in its lower reaches. And here, too, it has
ever had its literary champions. Was not Taylor--"the water poet"--the
Prince of Thames Watermen?"

If swans are characteristic of the upper reaches, the waterman or the
bargeman, assuredly, is of the lower. With the advent of the
railway,--which came into general use and effective development during
Dickens' day,--it was popularly supposed that the traffic of the "silent
highway" would be immeasurably curtailed. Doubtless it was, though the
real fact is, that the interior water-ways of Britain, and possibly other
lands, are far behind "_la belle France_" in the control and development
of this means of intercommunication.

There was left on the Thames, however, a very considerable traffic
which--with due regard for vested rights, archaic by-laws and traditions,
"customs of the port," and other limitations without number--gave, until
very late years, a livelihood to a vast riverside populatio