AUSTIN DOBSON AN ANTHOLOGY OF PROSE & VERSE THE THAMES AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS A FAMOUS river is a natural conductor of tradition. We stand by this or that decaying monument,-in this or that deserted chamber-and often find them as unsuggestive as the primrose was to Peter Bell. But with a river the case is different. It is alive. It was the contemporary of yesterday as it is the contemporary of to-day, as it will be of to-morrow when we shall no more tread its banks. For myself, I confess I never look upon the Thames-that Thames which to me, as an impenitent Londoner, is far above either Amazon or Mississippi—without feeling that my apprehension of the past, or at all events that portion of the past with which I am best acquainted, is strangely quickened and stimulated. Beside the broad, smooth-flowing stream, now, alas! sadly harried of fussy steamlaunches and elbowed of angular embankments, I have merely to pause, and memories press thick upon me. I can see Steele landing at Strand Bridge, with "ten sail of Apricock boats" from Richmond, after taking in melons at Nine Elms; I can see " Sir Roger " and Mr. Spectator" embarking at the Temple Stairs in the wherry of the waterman who had lost his 44 44 44 ARTISTS THREE 44 leg at La Hogue. Yonder comes a sound of French horns, and Mr. Horace Walpole's barge goes sliding past, with flashing oars, carrying Lady Caroline Petersham and Little Ashe " to mince chicken at Vauxhall, and picking up Lord Granby on the way— very drunk from Jenny's Whim." Or it is Swift, with that puppy Patrick" in attendance to hold his nightgown and slippers, bathing by moonlight at Chelsea; and by and by posting home to tell Mrs. Dingley and Stella, in the famous "Journal," that he has lost his landlady's napkin in the water, and will have to pay for it. Lower down, at the Dark House at Billingsgate, is the merry party of Hogarth's "Five Days' Tour," setting out at one in the morning on their journey towards Gravesend, lying on straw under a tilt, and singing "St. John" and "Pishoken" to keep up their spirits. Or lower down again, at Rotherhithe, it is Henry Fielding, sick of many diseases, but waiting cheerfully (only that his wife, poor soul, has a raging tooth!") to start in the “ Queen of Portugal," Richard Veal, master, on his last voyage to Lisbon. Or again. But there would be no end to the "agains.” 44 44 (Side-Walk Studies.) ARTISTS THREE IN the world of pictorial recollection there are many territories, the natives of which you may recognize by their characteristics as surely as Ophelia recognizes her true love by his cockle-hat and sandal shoon. There is the land of grave gestures and courteous ARTISTS THREE inclinations, of dignified leave-takings and decorous greetings; where the ladies (like Richardson's Pamela) don the most charming round-eared caps and frilled négligés; where the gentlemen sport ruffles and bagwigs and spotless silk stockings, and invariably exhibit shapely calves above their silver shoe-buckles; where you may come in St. James's Park upon a portly personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest; where you may seat yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask who is evidently expecting the arrival of a "pretty fellow "; or happen suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark hat who is hurriedly scrawling a poulet, not without obvious signs of perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped against their fitting background of highceiled rooms and striped hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed gardens. This is the land of STOTHARD. In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour-a fuller pulse of life. This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and domestic animals of all sorts; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom alewives; of the most winsome and black-eyed milkmaids and the most devoted lovers and their lasses; of the most headlong and horn-blowing huntsmen— a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog ; where John Gilpin takes the Babes in the Wood en THE GREENAWAY CHILD croupe; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts coquets the Great Panjandrum himself "with the little round button at top "—a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types-which is the land of CALDECOTT. Finally, there is a third country, a country inhabited almost exclusively by the sweetest little child-figures that have ever been invented, in the quaintest and prettiest costumes, always happy, always gravely playful,—and nearly always playing; always set in the most attractive framework of flower-knots, or blossoming orchards, or red-roofed cottages with dormer windows. Everywhere there are green fields, and daisies, and daffodils, and pearly skies of spring, in which a kite is often flying. No children are quite like the dwellers in this land; they are so gentle, so unaffected in their affectation, so easily pleased, so trustful and so confiding. And this is GREENAWAYland. (De Libris.) A SONG OF THE GREENAWAY CHILD As I went a-walking on Lavender Hill, And she looked at me shyly, with eyes of blue, So we strolled to the field where the cowslips grow, |