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books when the humour takes them, or treasuring up impressions for future use. One of them, by the way-Mr. Leslie has just Leslie-has turned his memories of the Thames to excellent purpose in his delightful volume Our River.' And unquestionably, in point of picnics and boating-parties, the Thames is par excellence the king of English rivers. We have rowed down the winding course of the Wye, through the holms and under the hanging covers of Herefordshire and Monmouth-counties where, in the damp warmth of the atmosphere, vegetation flourishes in greater luxuriance than in any others in England; we have boated on the Avon of Shakespeare and Warwick Castle; on the Colne of Hertfordshire-unknown to tourists, though classic to anglers; on a score of other streams, famous or nameless. But, putting width and volume of water out of consideration, no other of the river deities can hold a candle to Father Thames not even excepting the water-nymph "Sabrina Fair," who has her shrine in the pools of "sandy-bottomed Severn." It may be partly the brilliancy of the company that gilds our recollections, for, as our readers may remember, the choicest scenery of the Thames lies within easy reach of the society of the metropolis. Not altogether, however, and we have had some experience, for many a week have we spent in successive summers between the bridges of Henley and Hammersmith.

Perhaps as pleasant a time as we ever passed was in one of those rainless and cloudless summers that are now, unhappily, become so exceptional, when, with a quartette of friends from Aldershot camp and Cambridge. University, we had our headquarters at a well-known ang ling and boating hostelry, situated

between Shepperton and Waltonon-Thames. There our party practised a free though discriminating hospitality, and rarely indeed were our invitations refused. The military and academical elements mingled pleasantly, as in the masterpieces of the accomplished punch-brewer or salad-maker. The brilliant "talk" seldom stagnated into flat "conversation;" and the al fresco symposia were enlivened by songs and sentiments, to the former of which the very bargee would incline his ear, as he hushed his oaths while he brought his horses to a standstill. We are satisfied that transpiration must be admirable from the medical point of view, for we never spared ourselves when toiling against the stream, and used to step ashore in our flannels dripping like rivergods. What were the consequences? We would give carte blanche to the caterers at the "Swan," the "Pack-horse," or the "Bell," for we gave a wide berth to more fashionable establishments. We sat down to smoking chops of primitive size; to shoulders of lamb and bowlfuls of salad; to Cheshires, where we might cut and come again; to knobby loaves, new-drawn from the oven, with brimming tankards to the verge of indiscretion. But neither were our mental faculties dimmed, nor was our readiness for the evening dinner abated. Those Homeric banquets generated Homeric brilliancy. Cambridge_editors of critical editions of the Bard found themselves for the time, to their delight, rhapsodising with the fire and the eloquence of their original, till their less cultivated convives caught the divine contagion. Could we have secured the presence of an invisible shorthand reporter, we believe the flow of wit, pathos, and reason, at those

summer symposia on Thames, might have proved a not discreditable sequel to the Noctes Ambrosianæ of the North. Many dripping summers and fierce winters have passed since then, and the idleness of earlier years has given place to engros-ing occupations. Yet from time to time we have renewed our pleasures there; more often than not, in the company of the fair sex, and in more promiscuous companies. We challenge England, as we might defy the world, to show a much more enchanting spot for a picnic than on the tiny lawn before a metamorphosed farmhouse that stands under the feathering woods of Hedsor, looking down the woodland reach of river-bank, beneath the heights of Clievden and Taplow; though Magna Charta Island may run it hard, where we were once present at a meeting which must live in the memory of many a good contributor to Maga.' Alas that the Editor, in whose honour the entertainment was given, should be lost to the friends his society used to gladden! Well do we remember the happy and touching little speech which expressed his feelings towards the lady to whom we were indebted for that cheery day, a lady who was one of his most valued, personal, and literary intimates, and who, as she took occasion parenthetically to remind him, was his oldest contributor then present. A standing puzzle to him, as he said, after having so often lived under the same roof with her, was how she managed to overtake all the work which speaks for itself, and yet appear the least occupied or preoccupied of mortals. Nor can we see any possible reason, as we are writing veracious recollections, why we should not name the lady, and

say frankly that she was Mrs. Oliphant.

Why our English Mississippi, the father of English waters, should suggest the Pyrenees to us, we cannot pretend to say, unless it be on the lucus a non lucendo principle. For the lack of water is the grand defect in scenery that has almost every other attraction. And Pau, the beloved of English and Americans, is a famous centre for picnics, and many is the happy afternoon we have spent on the Landes and among the coteaux. Water is scarce, no doubt, but it is all the more valued when we come upon it; and the gaves, or mountain torrents, that flow from sources in the snow, are singularly beautiful and eminently characteristic. They show nothing of that dismal infusion of glacier moraine that turns the rushing Swiss rivers to the colour of diluted soap-suds, before these are purified in their course through some lake. The gaves are filled by the springs that have their rise in stony subsoil, and are filtered over beds of sand and gravel, till they run in the limpid green that has the tints of liquid emerald. When they have cleared the gorges in the mountains, and left the cover of the gloomy pine-forests, they ripple and smile through a succession of meadows, brawling or murmuring as they are caught among the rocks that have rolled down into the valleys from the flanks of the coteaux. A village over a gave is sure to be picturesque, with the ruins of the medieval castle or the shattered feudal tower; and the rocks scattered at random over the broken ground, as if the giants and the gods had been having a great stone" bicker." Then there are ivied bridges overhung by convents, and shrines that were the objects of pious pilgrimages before

the late epidemic of apparitions own way, and could enjoy themand revelations; and crosses on selves under no embarrassing supersolitary heights commanding un- vision. rivalled prospects; and châteaux seldom occupied by their owners, standing on the crests of the lower hills in neglected gardens overrun by roses and enlivened by nightingales.

In short, when people like the Gilpins were bent on pleasure, there was no want of objects for excursions, and the only difficulty was choosing. Nor have we ever joined in expeditions of the kind where there was more of fun and less of ceremony. Riding was in general favour, and the little Pyrenean horses are marvellous animals. They are said to be sprung of a Moorish strain, and assuredly they have the endurance and the fire of the mountain-bred and desert-born.

They lie on stone, and live on furze or chopped straw. After being overtasked in Pau through the winter and spring, they go to Biarritz for "relaxation" in the bathing season; and yet there is always a canter to be got out of them. We are ashamed to remember how the goodwill of those cheerful little cripples used to be abused by reckless parties of riders who had left their chaperons to follow in the carriages. As good of their kind, and in far better condition, were the ponies, which came out in pairs in the pony-carriages seated for two, with a "monkeybox" behind. Capital things the pony-carriages were considered; for at Pau, in those comparatively primitive days, the muffin system of Canada was encouraged to a limited extent, at least, the young man was allowed to invite a maiden as his companion for the day, and we need hardly say that the cramped monkey-box was no place for a mother, or spinster aunt. So the youthful couple had it all their

As for the materials of those rural or sylvan meals, they were much the same as are to be met with at picnics all the world over. More characteristic were the roughand-ready repasts in the inns in the remoter villages or in the mountainpasses, when we had driven farther afield on longer carriage expeditions. We found ourselves, of course, in pleasant company; we had either fished for an invitation or been fished for, according to ideas of our eligibility; and were travelling for the time in the easy relations of an adopted member of some united families. As we sat on the back seat under the eyes of our respectable parents for the time being, there were no opportunities for those little innocent endearments which seemed to grease the wheels of the slowest of the pony-carriages. But then, as we had foreseen, in so mountainous a country, horses must be continually crawling at a snail's pace; and in common consideration to them the young people must get out to walk. And there were enchanting scrambles by the wayside, where we were gathering flowers or chasing butterflies; or reaching the ever-ready hand in the difficult circumstances when a slip might sprain an ankle or stain a dress. Those sympathies and emotions gave a wonderful edge to the appetite, when we had started on a light and early breakfast. So that, quickly and pleasantly as the morning had gone by, not unwelcome was the sight of the village chimneys standing out against the schistose precipices behind, that dropped from box-covered hills into the bed of a shrunken torrent. The smoke from the kitchen never meant much in the meantime, as we knew from

experience. Yet experience had taught us to put some faith in the assurances of the host when he rubbed his hands and was voluble of promises. We knew pretty nearly what the menu must be, and that it would comprise the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Imprimis, there was the watery soup, with bits of bread bobbing about in it, more or less mixed up with lamp oil, according to the number of kilometres from the Spanish frontiers. Next came the delicious trout, caught with a hand-net in the reservoir in a neighbouring pool, blue of skin and white of flesh, as if they were still shivering in their crisp curdiness after lifelong immersion in ice-cold water; yet rich and delicate as the rosiest of Scotch sea-trout. Next, in shape of entrée, the inwards of some animal, "accommodated" in a white sauce that might have been excellent had it not savoured somewhat strongly of garlic. But in that dish as to the garlic, the cook had held his hand, which was probably much more than could be said for the haunch of mutton that followed. That usually more than "kept the landlord's promise to the eye, to break it to the taste." We are far from objecting to something stronger than the subdued soupçon of garlic, which we believe to be introduced in course of roasting in the best English kitchens. But the full flavour of the herb is still an abomination to us, though we might have been taught by this time in the school of semi-starvation to like it. So more often than not the haunch was countermanded when it had heralded itself by odours wafted upwards from the kitchen; or it was sent away uncut when its fragrance had filled the apartment. Prejudice apart, the young ladies for obvious reasons dare not ven

ture upon it; and even the British paterfamilias, who prided himself on the robustness of his appetite, held such villanous foreign weeds in abhorrence. Well, we could always fall back on the inevitable omelet, which was sure to be excellent; and there was delicious mountain-honey besides, and delicate bread; and there were goats'milk cheese, and golden butter, and brimming jugs of the richest milk, which was not only pleasant but wholesome when freely corrected with cognac. For it must be owned that the wine was generally infamous; and it was just as well that we were otherwise disposed to hilarity, since it could gladden the hearts of neither man nor woman. If we had brought our own basket of claret and champagne so much the better for us. In any case the dessert was delectable. For that we adjourned to the garden or a balcony, and had it in the shape of enjoyment of the soft yet most exhilarating air, and the glorious panorama of snow-capped mountains.

Somewhat more formal affairs were the picnics from the Eternal City; and so far as actual eating and drinking go, the associations with Rome are none of the most agreeable. The winter climate is depressing detestable

we had almost said

- whatever the hotelkeepers and physicians may maintain to the contrary; which makes the first fresh breaking of the spring in the Campagna like a breath of Paradise to the prisoner escaped from a dungeon. You are unusually dependent on regular exercise, and exercise you are extraordinarily loath to take, since the air makes you languid, while the "pavements" try your feet. The malarious influences of crumbling ruins, decaying civilisations, and decrepit. institutions-we are talking of the

days when the Pontiffs were supreme-seemed to have told upon the meat and tainted the vegetables. Beef! We always fancied that the original wearer of those coarse filets and steaks had passed the best of his days under the goad in an ox-waggon. Mutton! Only look at the stupid Romannosed sheep that cropped the rank vegetation among the swamps and the ruins of the Campagna, and say if you could expect anything sa voury of them in the way of cutlets! The black flesh of the wild boar, bred in the jungly lagoons or in the Pontine Marshes, was powerful enough in all conscience, without the picquant berberry sauce. The porcupines and hedgehogs, and other local delicacies that we used to eat in the hostelries, were well enough once in a way. But man cannot live by porcupines alone, nor did we ever meet them at picnics. Then the vegetables, in point of colour and taste, might have been weeds gathered from the Colosseum or the Baths of Caracalla, before the ædiles of the new régime had taken to polishing up those public buildings. And the native wines, from the oil and cotton-stoppered flasks of the local vintages, to drugged Lachryma Christi and doctored Marsala, were in every way suitable to the viauds. Nevertheless we have pleasant memories of the old pillared dininghall in the Hôtel d'Angleterre, where we were probably sowing the seeds of indigestions that made change of air and of scene imperative towards Easter.

Where the Italians excel-next to the Spaniards-is in their pastry. We hardly knew that they came in as correctives to heavy dinners, but we look back to many a luxurious light luncheon at the long tables laid at their restaurants

in readiness for all comers by the Signori Spillman or Nazzari. These were pleasant gossipy gatherings, where men rallied from the surrounding hotels and from the club round the corner. And talking of gatherings, Herr Spillman with his tent and his luncheon-tables used always to be in high feather at the suburban meets of the hounds. If the sport was indifferent, owing to the superabundance rather than the scarcity of foxes, and to those stiff posts and rails of seasoned oak that could only be negotiated by axes. and handsaws, there was far more flirtation, fun, and merriment than at the grand meets de rigueur with the Pytchley or the Quorn. Strings of screws had been sent forward to be mounted at the city gates; and well-filled carriages had gone rolling in rapid succession along the stones of the Appian Way, awakening the silent echoes of the street of tombs; and Roman magnates, irreproachable in their boots and pink, had come caracolling in intense self-satisfaction, looking the legitimate descendants of the conquerors of the world. When the hounds went off to draw, with the riders following them, the rest of the company remained by the pâtés and the ice-pails, under the shadow of the sepulchre of some mighty Roman house. Yet the less thoughtless

must have often felt that there was something sacrilegious in these revellings; though we know that familiarity breeds contempt, and how quickly, even in Jerusalem, one becomes the dawdling man about town. Far more congenial to the spirit of the scenes were excursions to the lonely sea-shore, where by the grim fortalice of the medieval baron you might listen to the melancholy lapping of the waves, as you sat on the sward under the foliage of the stone-pines; or to

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