Kambles about Eton.

II.

THE view of the Thames here given is from Windsor Bridge, which is a continuation of High Street. It has three arches, and joins the counties of Berkshire and Buckingham. Maidenhead Bridge is seven miles above, and Staines Bridge about eight below. There are many beautiful bends in the river here, and it may be said to have a character almost entirely its own. The Dee and the Wye, two of our most charming streams, differ in every respect, and the Severn has but few points of resemblance. The peculiarity of the Thames here seems to be that it never loses its rustic character, although so many palatial residences fringe its banks. The lilies and wild flowers, and the trees of matchless beauty, the barges and old-fashioned ferries, and the country inns and cottages seem always to preserve that.

I have just read some remarks by a celebrated authority on art, in which he says that internal comfort and sanitary regulations are incompatible with picturesqueness, and that where one exists the other must be sought in vain. Gainsborough, he said, or Constable, found out the most dilapidated examples of cottages that were quite innocent of the painter's or whitewasher's brush, and where the only colouring was what nature gave them; moss, lichens, and weather stains. But it seems to me that though very often there are picturesque combinations of colour, and even shape, in these tumble-down abodes, squalor is by no means necessary for an artistic brush. The animals that Morland used to paint so truthfully are not such as we can dwell on with pleasure, and the stables and styes in which they are housed make us feel as if we could pity them. The horses and dogs of Landseer are not only, of course, more pleasant to look at, but they are quite as picturesque. And so, along the Thames are many cottages which are not only all that could be desired for residences, but they are as artistic as the most fervid admirer of rustic beauty could desire.

Romney Island is visible from this bridge, and it extends down the river for about three-quarters of a mile, until it reaches the Playing Fields of Eton. Romney lock is entered by a cutting on the right hand side of the island,and the Eton masters' bathinghouse is at the weir on the left.

If we continue our journey up the Thames to Maidenhead, we shall be able to take the Great Western train to High Wycombe,

though, as there is so much to be seen about Wycombe, it will be necessary to make another trip. A place called Monkey Island is soon reached, and from it is a ferry to Buck's Bank. Monkey Island is interesting from its associations, rather than from any merit in the designs from which it takes its name. On it was a fishing box of the third Duke of Marlborough, and it was his ingenious fancy to have it fitted up with canvas on which are depicted monkeys doing the work of men. There are great numbers of them fishing, shooting, and hunting; and the whole design was in keeping with the depraved taste of the days when the most uncouth swineherds, or their wives, were alluded to as shepherds or shepherdesses, with classic names from Horace or Ovid, and all that was real or hearty had no sympathy from the critics or savants. Yet some money must have been spent over this fishing box, for the lodge is built of cut stone of the best quality and workmanship, and of very excellent design. The present billiard room was formerly a banqueting hall, and has seen many revels, characterised by more or less respectability. It contains an enriched ceiling, which unhappily is now falling into decay.

The stream round this island is clear and rapid, and there is always excellent fishing for various kinds of fish. Clermont is said to have been the name of the artist of the monkeys. He was a Frenchman, and there are very few that desire to deprive him of the honour. A little more than half a mile will bring us to Bray lock, and above this is Bray Church, and the George Hotel, which is on the water's edge. Taplow is almost a suburb of Maidenhead, and delightfully pleasant. The house called Taplow Court is a seat of the Grenfell family. It contains many pictures of great value, including a Titian, a Giulio Romano, and several Turners. The old parish church was here, and its site is still marked by a cross. The mansion was rebuilt about thirty years since, from the designs of Mr. Burne. The lanes about here abound with choice specimens of butterflies, and many a collection has been made by students at Eton, which they prize in their after-life, and which has been the means of calling their attention to natural history in the first instance. Unhappily, the white cabbage butterfly is among the most common, and its ravages in old gardens among cauliflowers and savoys are but too well known. The butterflies of our lanes cannot of course compare in brilliancy with the gorgeous Lepidoptera of foreign countries, any more than our wrens or robins can compare with the dazzling hues of tropical humming-birds, but we have some of great beauty and richness of colour, that when neatly arranged form a charming collection. In the lanes between Eton and Taplow we find the brimstone butterfly, the Polyomma

tus or blue butterfly, the tortoise-shells (Vanessa polychlorus), and the beautiful peacock and red-admiral. The former is marked exactly like the eye of a peacock's feather-which used to be so prized by salmon-fishermen, and it may be seen in early spring and late autumn; but the latter is in perfection in September. The painted-lady is also to be met with here, though it is not common in other parts of England. The colours are rather less vivid, but richer and softer in combination. The Burnham woods are quite a paradise for butterflies of the rarer kinds, and if you approach one that has settled you will see it expand and close its wings, possibly on the same principle that induces a peacock to open its tail. For every colour on the beautiful wings of a butterfly is quite visible to it. The wonderful eyes contain compound lenses of many thousands in number, and these are capable of refracting a ray of light proceeding from any object. To enumerate the many varieties of Lepidoptera that can be found between Eton and Maidenhead would not only be foreign to the present scheme, but impossible in our limits, as nearly every known kind is met with, not excluding the Camberwell-beauty (Vanessa antiopa), that is regarded as almost as great a prize by collectors as a Chelsea cup is by China maniacs.' Its appearance is rather uncertain, and in some years no specimen can be procured; but the willows that fringe the Thames about here are the most likely parts of England to find it, if it is out at all. Nor are the lanes about here less prolific in moths, than they are in butterflies. There is the gorgeous emperor moth (Saturnia carpini), which much resembles the peacock butterfly in its markings, but by many it would be considered to have a richer appearance. Then there is the goat moth, which, though not so common with us as it is in some countries, is quite common enough. Its caterpillars are shocking lovers of wood, and if it were as numerous with us as the white cabbage butterfly, our noble branching park trees would be terribly thinned down; and while on this subject, the writer must be pardoned for giving an example of the damage that two plainlooking butterfly-moths can do to a garden.

He lived for some time in Canada, and attached to the house where he lived was a very fine orchard, probably forty years old. It covered some two acres, and the proprietor had stocked it with the choicest trees. Fameuse, St. Lawrence Beauties, Rusticoats, and peach-flavoured apples were all there, and so great was the yield that the surplus sold for a large sum of money. But there had always in former days been care taken to rid the trees of caterpillars. The one which blights an orchard is deposited in the ova state in rings half an inch long, that completely envelop some

small spray, generally difficult to approach. They are pictures of neatness, and are covered over with an impenetrable varnish, which no storms can wash off-and no arctic cold can hurt the embryo caterpillars. There are about three hundred, or rather more, in each ring, and the sun that melts the ice and snow of the winter, and develops the early buds of May, develops also these tyrants; as soon as they are hatched, they swarm up every branch that shows a bud, and travel over an orchard in an incredibly short time. The land that before them was a garden of Eden is behind them a desolate wilderness. For one year the place was vacant, and a third of the orchard was destroyed. However, to continue the digression, Parliament was applied to, and readily granted a Small Birds Protection Act,' and in early spring the grackles and other birds that used to be shot down by French Canadian youths reappeared, and slaughtered the destroyers by millions.

If further apology is necessary for this digression, it must be found in the circumstance that the readers of these papers live in all parts of England, and so many of them are interested in the preservation of both fruit and shade trees; and the use birds are of to this desirable end cannot be too well known.

When I saw the ravages that were committed by the caterpillars, I had been reading in an English natural history how some colonial governor had imported starlings to a West India Island to thin some plague of vermin that were making havoc with the crops. And then we looked for the grackles and robins, a bird about the size of a thrush, and belonging to the thrush tribe. These perched on the small branches and gorged themselves with the small caterpillars. This I mentioned to one of the ministers, either the Minister of Agriculture or the Secretary of State, I cannot remember which, but he reported the matter to his colleagues, and almost at once a request was made that I should send the outline of a scheme that could be drafted into a bill, which bill passed through three readings and became law as soon as the forms could be complied with that made it a statute; and I had the satisfaction. of being required to explain this before Mr. Auberon Herbert's Committee in the English House of Commons. The English form is not so good as the Canadian, because the list of protected birds is given, in place of protecting all, and enumerating the exceptions only, such as wild pigeons, hawks, and sparrows (?); so that there is a list of hundreds in place of four or five species to remember.

The many moths and butterflies, as before said, it would not be possible now to begin even to enumerate, but the naturalist will find all he requires in Newman's British Moths' and Mr. Stainton's work. The subject is also pleasantly alluded to in Mr. J. E. Taylor's

"Half-Hours in the Green Lanes.' Moths, if nicely arranged and not spoiled of their down, may be made to form even a more pleasing case than butterflies, they are so exceedingly soft and velvety. The best way to show them is to line the case with black velvet, instead of white paper, as is so often done; the paler shades are thus thrown out in fine contrast. There is no moth, however homely, which if it is so exhibited does not look well.

To resume the thread of our journey, however, we may be supposed to have arrived at Maidenhead, and to take the Great Western train to High Wycombe, one of the principal towns in Buckinghamshire, and one of the most pleasant.

Wycombe is sometimes called Chipping Wycombe. Chipping is a common affix to market-towns; we have, for example, Chipping Camden with its old market canopy, and Chipping Norton with its old church and grammar-school, Chipping Ongar with the church partly built of Roman bricks, as others in the neighbourhood are, and Chipping Sodbury, with many more. It indicates a markettown. Mr. Langley regrets that he could not find a Roman tessellated pavement that was discovered in the grounds of Wycombe Abbey, and was copied, he says, 'by Mr. Rowell, a painter. It was diversified with a great variety of work, in small squares of several colours, and in the centre was the figure of a wild beast. This is the whole I have been able to collect on the subject.' Roman coins have been found in the neighbourhood; one of the Emperor Nerva, some of Antoninus Pius and of Marcus Aurelius were found with the tessellated pavement. All this pavement has however been exposed again to view by Lord Carington, to whom the soil belongs.

Wycombe Abbey, his seat, was formerly called Loakes manorhouse, and in a compendious history of Wycombe, which was published by Thomas Langley in 1797, it is described as an ancient irregular building near the borough, built about the time of James I, but considerably enlarged by Lord Shelburne soon after he purchased it. The rooms, though appropriate to domestic convenience, have little decoration, and few pictures worthy of notice.' Still, even in this condition it had its history and its associations, and it might with a very little adaptation have been made to fit itself to the necessities of the present day. One feels regret indeed to think that Wyatt has substituted a raw modern quasigothic building; but the park is simply grand, and the trees in it are of very great beauty indeed.

The view given overleaf is just below the town, and the river Wick adds greatly to the beauty of the scene. Near the church is Wycombe market, which was built at the expense of Lord Shel