You may, doubtless, if you are greedy of information on these heads, find all conceivable arguments set forth in the pages of the Surrey Archæological Society’s Transactions. I confess my curiosity does not carry me to such lengths. The stone is there, and, like good tourists, we accepted as so much gospel the facts set forth on it, and cared nothing as to the etymology of Kingston. Instead, we busied ourselves in hiring a boat which should take us to Reading, a journey which we estimated of a week’s duration. [Illustration: BELOW KINGSTON.] Geographers, physical and political, tell us that Thames drains and waters all that great district which lies between the estuary of the Severn and the seaward sides of Essex and Kent; that it is the fertiliser of square miles innumerable, and the potent source of London’s pre-eminent rank amongst the cities of the earth. This is all very true, but the geographers take no note of Thames’ other functions; the inspiration of the poets and the painters, the enrichment of innkeepers and boat-proprietors, and the pleasuring of all them that delight in bathing and the rowing of boats. Everywhere in summer-time are boats and launches and canoes, punts and houseboats, and varieties innumerable of floating things; for when the sun shines, and the incomparable river scenery of the Thames is at its best, the heart of man desireth nothing more ardently than to lie in a boat upon the quiet mirrored depths of a shady backwater, or better still, to sit within the roaring of the weir, where the swell of the tumbling water acts like a tonic upon the spirits, and the sunlight fashions rainbows in the smoke-like suspended moisture of its foam. These are modern pleasures. For centuries the Thames has flowed through a well-peopled country, yet the delights of the river are new-found, and only in the eighteenth century did the poets’ chorus break forth in flood of praise. But to-day every one who can string rhymes makes metrical essays upon the Thames, and writers without number have written countless books upon it. From Kingston to Oxford, houseboats make populous all its banks, and the quantity of paint and acres of canvas that have been expended upon artistic efforts along its course, from Trewsbury Mead to the Nore, must ever remain without computation. For these reasons ’tis better to say little of our journey this afternoon to Shepperton, past Hampton Court, the Cockney’s paradise, to Hampton, Sunbury, Walton, and Halliford. The river was crowded with boating parties, with those who raced and with others who paddled lazily, and when night was come the houseboats hung out their paper lanterns, all red and yellow, that streaked every little ripple with waving colour.