Such are some of the recollections which evolve themselves at this date, when we are on the eve of a new era and a new course. The old 'time' records, which have been gradually improving and which, to our knowledge, are recorded in the most random manner in the local calendar, will now have to stand or fall by themselves. A new course, with less slack water in it, will hardly bear close comparison with an old one as to time. The old soreness of fluky winds, and 'might have beens,' laid to the discredit of much-abused Poplar Point, must now find no longer scope. Luck in station there still will be, inevitably, when wind blows off shore; but there now will be no bays to coast, and no Berks corner to cut. The glories of Henley bridge have been on the wane for some years past; we can remember when enterprising rustics ranked their muck carts speculatively along the north side of the bridge; but fashion and the innovation of large moored craft have lost the bridge much of its old popularity. Besides, the newly planted aspens along the towpath, which were given to replace the old time-honoured 'poplars,' shut off the view of the reach from the bridge. It is no longer possible, telescopically, to time opponents in practice from the Lion and Angel window, as of old. It is not so much as twenty years ago that steamers were unknown on the reach. The 'Ariel' (the late Mr. Blyth's) was the first of her kind built by Mr. Thornycroft. Till then, row-boats had the reach to themselves. We are old enough to recall the Red Lion flourishing as a coaching inn; then came its breakdown, when 'rail' broke the 'road,' and it shut up, until Mrs. Williams, the veteran landlady, who erst welcomed, and is still welcomed by, so many retired generations of oarsmen, migrated from the Catherine Wheel in 1858, and re-opened the Lion once more.