Cambridge, or both, than to languish by itself. The plan points to an extension, not only of the numbers, but of the functions of the universities-to making them not only great final schools for the rich, but the national centres and supervisors of liberal education. It retains, however, a close connexion between the student and the university, not only in the way of control, but of actual residence, though for a reduced period; differing herein from the system of the University of London, which has now abolished the privileges even of its affiliated colleges, and become

merely an examining board granting degrees to all comers.

We have given a brief account of a movement most important to education without attempting to comment minutely on any of the plans. It is evident that English education is about to be reorganized, and that its re-organization will be one of the cardinal questions of the immediate future. The rulers of the universities will be called upon to take a leading part in the process; and it is satisfactory to see that deliberation has begun.

WILL the reader start with me from Chelsea this fine morning in my little boat, and have a chat about the water, the shores, and their notabilities? If he regards old historical associations, he will assuredly do this, for what river is richer in such than the Thames? If he cares for natural beauty of a quiet order, such as becomes "a land of ancient peace," like England, he will do this; for may be I, who am an old oarsman, can show a spot or two of no celebrity, but which have their own merits in a charming aspect of repose. It is a bright day; therefore, shadowy Sir, or Madam, take your seat in stern of my little gig; your weight will not incommode me, ghost of my fancy that you are, and as such be not nervous. I am, as I said before, an old oarsman--will carry you safely; and, although the boat looks somewhat light for the two of us, yet, if you will keep still and listen, safe enough. If you find me a bore, I'll put you ashore with pleasure, and row on with my other fancies.

The day is fresh and brisk with a constant air, which makes the water shiver in rippling lengths of darker hue, that stretch on its mirror surface like

It

So

the grey-toned purple clouds above. is river and sky, sky and river, white cloudlets like swans among the grey, white swans themselves upon the water mocking their aerial brethren above. They tilt against the breeze as the cloudlets do. They sail before it with ruffledspread wings,-masses of snow. fresh is the scene that the old bridge just above looks, with its quaint wooden piers so sharply defined in the clear air, more like a brilliant mediæval illuminated drawing than common English daylight. This bridge is soon to give way to another of iron. The navigation of the Thames, and the traffic between its opposite shores, may be improved by this new work; yet, if the novel structure resembles its already erected compeers, it will be no improvement to the picturesque aspect of the stream. The river is a sheeny mirror to its dark masses, whose reflections scarcely seem to shake upon the running tide. Notwithstanding all this splendour there is a look of fickleness about the sky, the shade of a whimper, so to speak, which may burst in a shower of tears ere long, and for which it will be well to be provided.

Putting a waterproof coat into the boat a convenience you may dispense with, kind ghost, for who ever heard of a ghost with a cold in his head?—I determine to overtake the picturesque and brilliant pair of voyagers in advance, of course merely for the gratification of an enlightened curiosity respecting the lining of the lady's bonnet. Sehi-e-e-r, goes the boat through the water for half a mile, and a negligent glance reveals the true state of the case. The passenger is Fem. Brit. Domestica, and the youth one of those who patronise all sorts of coloured garments, and tastefully unite a blue waistcoat with a red head of hair, or a green scarf with a pair of orange gloves. If that fish which leapt out of the water just now is a sign of rain,-woe awaits you, amorous, happy, and heedless pair! Woe to those muslins, smiling damsel! Let us linger awhile, good ghost, and watch. A little badinage goes on-she, fascinating creature, makes as if to upset the boat; he, by an action as if of swimming, vows to save her in her own despite; her grateful eyes acknowledge the magnanimous offer; then come some prodigious falsehoods of his feats in swimming, till, growing a second Leander in her eyes, she conceives herself in the position of poor Hero, loverless and lorn, and with deprecating gestures warns him not to be too rash. Girl, fear not; he will no more risk his life than you decline his rival's invitation to go to Rosherville on the next annual festival of the Ancient Order of Tailors.

Leave we these, and on over the bright water while I tell you something that the name of Leander recalls. The famous rowing club that take their name from him of Abydos were once afloat on this water which bears ourselves; their boat, entangled amongst a press of others, was swamped by the swell of a passing steamer. She filled; it was a matter of life or death! The crew were steered by their own servant, a well-known trainer, since defunct: he, in the heat of the moment, feeling the slender craft sinking beneath them, cried to the man

give me your oar, I cannot swim ! "Nor can I swim, but here it is," said the brave Englishman, deliberately bestowing a life to the demand, and abandoning his own sure safety to another's terror. Now I call this a splendid act, equal in its motives to that feeling of duty which ever commands our English captains to be the last in leaving a sinking ship. The Leander Club rightly hold this act as the glory of their society.

We are now in Putney Reach, a splendid stretch of water, used for boatraces ever since boat-races were held on the Thames. Putney Church has seen many a one, and more than one strange thing besides. It's a quiet-looking wellkept country church, to which you would never give credit as the place of warlike assemblages. Yet such it was, for, in the Commonwealth time, Fairfax and the officers of the Parliamentary army held council here, and on the Sabbath too. After the discussions fiery Hugh Peters held forth from the pulpit, and all the while the Parliamentary forces lay in the neighbourhood other ministers pronounced encouraging and godly discourses for the benefit of the men of war. Put yourself back two hundred years, and you may well conceive how the loud and strident voice of Peters came through the church windows over the calm water here in some of his burning exhortations to "serve the Lord, even unto slaying with the arm of flesh." The sentries of the king's army were within hearing, on the other side of the river. The whole neighbourhood recalls the great contest, and is the scene of one of the most clumsy of the king's many blunders in generalship—one of his false steps of the most fatal kind, into which he appears to have been led by headstrong advisers and self-willed partisans. There remains a look of antiquity about the place which mightily aids the conception of the pacing sentries as, armed with pike or arquebus, they passed and repassed before the church. There is the tower where the king's own banner flouted him in the face, and his subjects bore arms for his destruction. The water

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Peters exhorted his hearers to be zealous unto slaying, but there had been slaying of another sort here a generation before. Take what the parish books tell us. In 1625 occur the following entries in the registers of account:"Paid the carpenter for a barrow to carry "the people that died of the sickness to "church to bury them, 58. Paid to "Commynge for his charges going to "London to get two women to come up to keep the sicke, the people being all "sike, 2s. 6d. To the warders [watchers 'by the doors of infected houses], for "helping to bury the dead, 4s. 6d." On Putney Heath was fought the innocuous duel between Pitt and Mr. Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, and of all times on a Sunday afternoon; in the same place came off the famous duel between Canning and Castlereagh. Fancy Earl Russell and Mr. Disraeli coming here to fight a duel now-a-days! One of the old Diarists commends, as "pretty," the extreme taciturnity of Thames watermen, from whom it is difficult to get anything like a full and fair answer to a question. That brown-faced man who sculled past us just now, biting a straw between his teeth, scarcely vouchsafed a reply to my inquiry as to the state of the tide, and thus maintains their ancient repute by perpetually meditating how to evade an answer entirely or put it in the briefest, or least satisfactory, terms.

Look along the reach here, and see how beautifully the masses of trees gather against the bank, from the ancient. gardens of the Bishop of London's palace on one hand to nearly as far as Hammersmith; on the other they group themselves so fairly with the houses and boat-sheds of Putney, curving with the river in a perfect line of beauty, guarding it by heavy piles of foliage on the rising ground at Roehampton, that we own there is not within fifty miles of

poplars, whose distinct vertical forms give character and relief to the rounder groups of trees. These poplars sway gently in the wind, that makes a soft and persistent murmur in innumerable boughs. Pass we along the bank of the stream, a novel prospect opening at every stroke of the sculls as we speed past each angle of the shore. No Londoner need complain that natural beauty is absent near the smoky city when so much of what is fair is thus at hand. How noble are those elms, mighty earthplumes that the bright planet waves through the sunshine or trails through the mists of dawn or night! How the silver lining of the aspen leaves glitter against the dark branches, and clap countless hands of gleeful joy in the bright day!

:

We pass swiftly under the bridge at Hammersmith, and soon come upon the first "islet in the river," Chiswick Ait. The islets, so low down in the river's course, are gatherings of osiers and river silt. Many a time have I sat and watched the scour of the water upon one of their apexes-seen how slowly the work of change was going on. A far-off storm, say elemental battle fought at sea, breaks down a dam or moves a bank a hundred miles away, the current is accelerated or slackened in its whole path. The life of the little islet-that is, its power of resisting the river's scour-is held under changed conditions that angle which I noticed a month ago bravely resisting the water's force is now turned, and its power filched away; the water that erst was rebutted now takes it in the rear; and a little eddy scoops a hollow amongst the roots of the willow that wept upon the bank above. Soon the earth has gone from them, the wind's shaking helps the work-for, on a breezy day, you shall see a trail of earth-stained water that the rocking of the tree churns up—a labyrinth of root shows itself, and, as the flesh leaves the bones of an aged man, so this stands stark and bare; the hollow deepens and widens, the tree dies; and, at last, some dank autumn night

bank-angle, fortification that it was, comes slowly and heavily down, and the cold stream runs where the winds of summer delighted to play.

Away from the marshy islet, just remembering that many curious discoveries of valuables have been made in similar places, concealed in troublous times. Turn back a while, and look at that row of tall Queen Anne's houses, upon the Mall at Hammersmith. One of those Dr. Johnson's admirer, Miss Pinkerton, inhabited, and there she had a certain Miss Rebecca Sharp for pupil. Is not Becky as real to us as-for instance, Jemmy Thomson, who is said to have written "The Seasons" in a house adjoining a tavern called "The Doves," there on your right hand, both still standing? The said James Thomson knew how to find good quarters, and, with all his queer conventionality of style, could do as unconventional a thing as sleep till two o'clock on a summer's day, then get up, and, with his nightcap on, go into a neighbouring garden, stand before a peach-tree, and, with hands in his breeches-pockets, bite the living fruit from a living bough. What a notion of luxury! Could Apicius devise anything more luscious than that browsing on the bloomy fruit in a summer afternoon? Fancy the squab author of "Liberty " after all his sentimental raptures on the simplicity of rustic lifeto have enjoyed himself in this superlative fashion!

Leave Jemmy Thomson and his exalted epicurism; run through the curving reaches towards Kew. Could Could either of us sing, we might pass the miles gaily in the way busy Mr. Pepys used on his voyages, enjoying himself hereabouts with Mercer and the rest, to the great disgust of his "poor wife." Yet for proper boat-songs, barcarolles, we should be at a loss. There is not a decent boating song in the English language, strange to say, for Moore's "Row, Brothers, Row," is the only one approaching to it, and of that both of us have had enough. I cannot tell you any fairy stories anent the river, for the

it not strange that we have no waterspirits on English rivers? In these waters was never Kelpie seen plunging, nor monstrous Nick dancing, by moonlight. I never saw the gold-ringleted boy with the scarlet cap who frequents the Irish rivers; therefore there is no chance of our hearing him play soulentrancing music upon a silver harp. This is hard, for we might do him a good turn by promising future redemption, always the earnest inquiry of these beings. We have no Nixies on the Thames; so I have never heard the ring of the water-smith's hammer, nor seen him at work in the grey dawn, as you may do on the Scotch lochs. St. Martin's Land, the beautiful country whence the fair green children came, is not here. This was, folks say, near St. Mary's of the Wolf-Pits, not far from Norwich. No Thames' sojourner has seen the Lady with the Golden Oar who navigates the Welsh lake Van, singing to the midnight moon and making the dark mountains ring with faery notes. It is useless attempting to woo her with seven loaves of bread or seven Welsh cheeses, the successful means employed by her lover. No one ever lost a child by the malevolent water-spirits of the Thames, as happened by the banks of that accursed inky Spanish lake, into which, if you throw a stone, it suffices to irritate the fiends, or raise a sudden storm and terrible gusts of wind, by which, the legend tells, a lost child was restored, and cast like a faded flower, all smirched and sickly, at their feet. Except the fairy ladies of the Arthurian cycle, we have no British river or lake fays, such as Nimue or Vivien, Merlin's betrayer. We may spare these; there was a fearful beauty about them, and a Druidic horror, such as one feels on looking at Stonehenge, they seem so awful and unsympathising. Even "Sabrina fair," whom Milton fabled of the Severn, is classical and half-stony.

Look up cloud-land there! What a mighty gathering of thrones of snow! The lofty peaks rank along the horizon, desolate and abandoned thrones of

about us.

They have vindicated their power, it would seem: all things keep still, like the breathless suspense of death. Let us come out of the heat awhile, and lie quiet under the arching boughs of those willows, whose pendents send a track of ripples when they touch the tide. How cool and still it is; the very air sleeps! How steady are the golden bars of sunlight that slant through this green roof; how lovely the green of its depths in multitudinous foliage! How like icebergs those giant clouds that gather without sound! If one could hold a fire in one's hand "by thinking of the frosty Caucasus," we might realize them to be icebergs indeed, with their rifted, riverless, and ghostly sides of snow. Let us try. Did you ever see an iceberg? It is one of the grandest sights of the world. Its utter motionlessness in the turbulent sea seems deathly and most awful. One

I heard of was a vast opal that glimmered with tintings of the "millioncoloured bow;" snow, heaped like the foliage of a crystalline forest, gathered upon its peaks in fantastic wreaths or heapy folds of pearl-dust-a world of blinding white in miles of level fields within, and over them the shadows of flying clouds swam, each on his journey. Spires and pinnacles of transparent stone, adamant it seemed, shot high into the sky, and seemed durable for ever. At every base a glittering line of flashing water fell from level unto level to the sea. Under a huge ice-cliff, that rose a thousand feet of dark blue crystal from the brine, a great cleft was, and therefrom poured a river, purer than glass, shining in the sun, and bowed above by a vast steadfast iris. Its reflections glided like a waving of swords over the intense opaline of the solid cliff, which seemed as dark as the air is, for solidity and depth of purity, and shook gold lights over the lapislazuli of the water-rock, breaking into the glooms of shadowed clefts like the glancing of a weird fire made by a wizard out of Death and Cold, and gilding the high roofs of many an untrodden cavern

sea, the roar of countless waterfalls shook the air, and into the rivers huge blocks of ice fell, or, bounding on the bright smooth plains of sheer ice, rushed shrieking-such the sharp sound-from ledge to ledge, and dashed with bound on bound into the sea clear of the base. Motionless as the whole body looked, one saw after a time that it heaved before the wind, and at night its peaks swerved slowly, pointing from star to star. The day-by-day life of the great berg was destruction; its melted rivers ran into the hungry sea. We lay near this stray monster of the North's white flocks a whole week. On the second day the loftiest peaks had gone; the third, the streams, like living saws, wrought deep channels whose sides fell inwards; on the fourth not a flake of snow remained. On the fifth it parted in two unequally, one portion rushed over with a toppling sweep that was horrible to see, and bore up its huge base out of the depths in rockings that made the ocean all a-foam for a mile about; on the seventh night it was laid so low that few indeed of the stars of the horizon were obscured by that mass which had erst cast a shadow five miles over the water at dawn and been level with the North Star at midnight. last look through telescopes showed it broken over by the waves in lonely destruction. In seven days the whole was gone, that in its Arctic birthplace might have lived a thousand years or more, --yea, might have seen the Danes of the ninth century sail in its shadow when they found America. This thing might have seen stout Henry Hudson, creeping along the coast when he discovered the great bay that gave his name and took his life; we can fancy him and his ten men and a boy looking at those hills I saw melt away. Ten men and a boy-such was the crew of the indomitable Englishman, when last heard of on those unknown seas. It gives one a thrill to think of it. Why, when he went his second voyage, do you know this Ulysses of the North remained two years there, with a crew of three-and

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