We are now approaching the point at which the beauty of the river culminates. From Marlow, past Cookham, Hedsor and Cliefden, to Maidenhead, a distance of eight or ten miles, we gladly suspend the labour of the oar, and let the boat drift slowly with the stream. As we glide along, even this gentle motion is too rapid, and we linger on the way to feast our eyes with the infinitely varied combination of chalk cliff and swelling hill and luxuriant foliage which every turn of the river brings to view: Woods, meadows, hamlets, farms, Spires in the vale and towers upon the hills; [Illustration: 8031] The great chalk quarries glaring through the shade. The pleasant lanes and hedgerows, and those homes Which seemed the very dwellings of content and peace and sunshine." * * Down Stream to London. By the Rev. S. J. Stone. The "castled crags" of the Rhine and the Moselle,--the "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,"--the massive grandeur of the banks of the Danube, are far more imposing and stimulating; but the quiet, tranquil loveliness of this part of the Thames may make good its claim to take rank even with those world-famed rivers. There is something both unique and charming in the dry "combes," or fissures in the chalk ranges, rapidly descending, and garnished with sweeping foliage of untrimmed beech-trees. The branches gracefully bend down to the slope of the rising sward; while, from the steepness of the angle, the tree-tops appear from below as a succession of pinnacles against the sky. Many a roamer through distant lands has come home to give the palm for the perfection of natural beauty to the rocks and hanging woods of Cliefden. That they are within an hour's run of London does not indeed abate their claim to admiration, but may suggest the reason why they are so comparatively little known. The mansion on the height, designed by Sir Charles Barry, is now in the possession of the Duke of Westminster. [Illustration: 9032]