A short distance downstream is the historic mead whose name is familiar on every lip. It is a quiet, smooth meadow beside the river, and it is Runnymede, or Runney Mead, where King John signed Magna Charta, and so made a beginning of English freedom. There is now an island in the Thames at that spot called Magna Charta Island, but it is not thought that the Charter was signed there. It is believed that John and the barons met on the mainland, the King riding down from Windsor to meet his offended subjects. Below Windsor the Thames flows past many well-known riverside towns, and at last meets the tide. The sea is still nearly seventy miles away, but salt water now mingles with the fresh of the brooks and rills which have made up the great river, and a change takes place--the stream of pleasure becomes more and more a stream of busy trade. "Though pleasure-boats are to be seen in quantities any summer evening about Putney; though market-gardens still border the banks at Fulham, yet the river is for the greater part lined with wharves and piers and embankments. It is no wild thing running loose, but a strong worker full of earnest purpose. It is the great river without which there would have been no London, the river which bears the largest trade the world has ever known." IN A CATHEDRAL CITY. The cathedral cities of England are among the chief glories of our land, and the charm of these ancient places is only felt to the full when the splendid church dominates absolutely over the city clustered around it. A cathedral in a place which has swelled to a big modern town may be interesting, but it lacks the appropriate setting: it should stand in the midst of a small, old city, whose streets are narrow and winding; whose houses are gabled, lattice-paned, and with overhanging storeys; whose medieval walls may still be traced, and the mouldering keep of whose ruined castle may still be climbed. First of all English cathedral cities stands Canterbury, with its splendid church, raised upon the spot where first Christianity flourished in Britain. Kent was the cradle of the English race in England, and to Kent came St. Augustine, preaching the Christian faith to Ethelbert, Saxon king, who listened and believed.