We will suppose that we have been simply chance visitors, like Samuel Pepys, just walking round quadrangle, chapel, and hall, taking note of such things as we may see in each building, but not diving down deeply into the early history of the College of our Lady of Eton. We have, however, just dwelt sufficiently on that early history to be able to see from what the Eton, as we know it now, arose. The oppidans, or commensals, as they were once called, the outsiders so to speak, were a body unheard of at first. Such boys found their way to the school no one can exactly say how, and now they swamp the foundationers, though the latter have been increased in number, and a band of seventy collegers represents the original body of twenty-five poor grammar-scholars. In the same way the staff of masters has, as a necessity, grown in like proportion, and the original master and usher have become the head and lower masters respectively. A change, too, has come over the Provosts. The post which they fill is now one chiefly of dignified ease, and the responsible chiefs have been for many generations of schoolboys, at any rate since the time of Dr. Keate, the headmasters.

Eton has become not merely a page but rather many pages in the history of England,

for here the intellects of, may we not say, most of our leaders of the last two hundred years have been trained? We cannot even walk through the Chiltern Hundreds as we are doing without finding many a place where an Etonian has left his name conspicuous. Thus it is that we associate Beaconsfield with the name of Edmund Waller and Stoke Pogis with that of Thomas Gray, or read the happy descriptions jotted down by Horace Walpole, and remember that these men were once Eton boys,

CHAPTER VIII.

"TWIXT THAMES AND COLN.

The Thames Valley-View of Eton-"The Black Pots"- Sir Henry Wotton, Isaac Walton, and Charles II.-Datchet Mead and Falstaff-Christopher Barker, the Queen's Printer -Wyrardsbury-Gordon Gyll and the Funeral of George Lipscombe-Place Farm-Magna Charta Island-Ankerwycke Priory-Sir Thomas Smyth and Bishop John TaylorHorton-The Church and the Grave of Sara MiltonJohn Milton at Horton-Berkin Manor-House-Scenery of the Sonnet to the Nightingale, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso―The Surrey Hills-Visits to London - Windsor-Masques-The Lawyers at Whitehall—Henry Lawes-Harefield House―The Countess of Derby and the Egertons-Arcades-Ludlow Castle and Comus-The Plague Year-Lycidas-Correspondence between Wotton and Milton-The Bulstrodes and the ManorHouse-Colnbrook.

Now that we have regained the Thames valley we shall continue in it for a time. We are not, however, going to pass through such lovely scenery as that which we passed above Maidenhead Bridge, and the banks on each side of us will be, for the most part, low-lying meadow land. The places which we are going to visit will not be situated on wooded slopes, but still even this lowland scenery has its own quiet beauty.

"Where Thames along the daisied meads

His wave in lucid mazes leads,

Silent, slow, serenely flowing,

Wealth on either side bestowing."

We cast off from Windsor Bridge, and soon we are coasting along by the side of the Eton playing fields, and have on our left the most charming view that there is of the College. The red-brick buildings, partly veiled with ivy, peep out between the trees, and in the centre we see the two turrets of Provost Lupton's tower rising above their roofs, while the picturesque group on the left is flanked by the stately chapel. On the other side of the river we have the trees of Windsor Home Park, with the grand mass of the Castle towering above them.

But we must not leave the Buckinghamshire side, and must content ourselves with a view from the river only of Windsor Forest and Surrey hills. As soon as we have come to the end of the Playing Felds, we find ourselves at a well-known fishing station, called The Black Pots. We may connect this spot with the names of several illustrious fishermen from Eton and elsewhere. Hither came Provost Sir Henry Wotton with his friend Isaac Walton, and no more enthusiastic fisherman friend could he have had. Walton describes the Provost as an "undervaluer of money," by which we may

suppose that he intended to convey that he was a bad man of business and a spendthrift, which indeed seems to have been the case. Perhaps, however, all defects were in the opinion of the gentle Isaac more than counterbalanced by the fact that Sir Henry was "a dear lover and frequent practiser of the art of angling," and found it "after tedious study " a "rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it." Walton also describes his own sport at the Black Pots, where he would fish for "a little samlet or skegger trout, and catch twenty or forty of them at a standing."

The Provost built himself a fishing-house on the spot, and the great decorative artist, Verrio, afterwards erected a summer-house, to which Charles II. came at times to fish. Pope has described the royal sport:

"Methinks I see our mighty monarch stand,
The pliant rod now trembling in his hand.
And see, he now doth up from Datchet come,

Laden with spoils of slaughtered gudgeons, home."

Hither was borne, against his will, another famous but ficticious character, Sir John