It was the last race ever rowed by the Universities over the long six-mile course. To suit the tide, it was rowed down, from Putney to Westminster Bridge. My brother unluckily lost his straw hat at the start, and the intense heat on his head caused him terrible distress. The boats were almost abreast down to the Battersea reach, where there were a number of lighters moored in mid stream, waiting for the tide. This was the crisis of the race. As the boats separated, each taking its own side, Egan, the Cambridge coxswain, called on his crew: Shadwell, the Oxford coxswain, heard him, and called on his own men, and when the boats came in sight of each other again from behind the lighters, Oxford was well ahead. But my brother was getting faint from the effects of the sun on his head, when Shadwell reminded him of the slice of lemon which was placed in each man’s thwart. He snatched it up, and at the same time F. Menzies took off his own hat and gave it him; and, when the boat shot under Westminster Bridge with a clear lead, he was quite himself again. In our college boat—of which he was now stroke, and which he took with a brilliant rush to the head of the river, bumping University, the leading boat, to which his captain, F. Menzies, was still stroke, after two very severe races—he always saw that every man had a small slice of lemon at the start, in memory of the Battersea reach. Next year (1843), owing to a dispute about the time, there was no University race over the London course, but the crews were to meet at the Henley Regatta. The meeting was looked forward to with more than ordinary interest, as party feeling was running high between the Universities. In the previous year, after their victory in London, the Oxford boat had gone to Henley, but had withdrawn, in consequence of a decision of the stewards, allowing a man to row in the Cambridge crew who had already rowed in a previous heat, in another boat. So the cup remained in the possession of the Cambridge Rooms, a London rowing club, composed of men who had left college, and of the best oarsmen still at the University. If the Cambridge Rooms could hold the challenge cup this year also, it would become their property. But we had little fear of this, as Menzies’ crew was in better form than ever. He had beaten Cambridge University in 1842, and we were confident would do it again; and, as the Rooms were never so strong as the University, we had no doubt as to the result of the final heat also. I remember walking over from Oxford the night before the regatta, with a friend, full of these hopes, and the consternation with which we heard, on arriving at the town, that the Cambridge University boat had withdrawn, so that the best men might be draughted from it into the Rooms’ crew, the holders of the cup. Those only who have felt the extraordinary interest which these contests excite can appreciate the dismay with which this announcement filled us. Our boat would, by this