Notice-boards upon a willowy eyot, and a fence athwart the stream, forbidding the passage of boats round the considerable backwater to the left, introduce us to a permanent line of eelbucks. Soon the bridge and church of Caversham appear afar; and, dimly, to the right, the chimneys and roofs of Reading. The Thames is again bordered on the north by hills, a continuation of the range which began at Hart's Wood. From Mapledurham Lock, however, the river, instead of running parallel with the hills, made a detour, and ran side by side with the railway, until, at the Chasey Farm eelbucks, it turned north again to meet them. "There is not," wrote Mary Mitford in her "Recollections of a Literary Life," "such another flower-bank in Oxfordshire as Caversham Warren," and this reference is to the breadth of country extending from the sedge-lined river to the tree-crowned chalk hills which have terminated their guardianship of the northern banks of the Thames. From the brow of the hills, upon which modern residences have of late years multiplied exceedingly, there are widespread prospects through which the silver Thames pursues the even tenor of its way, more beautiful from the distant standpoint than, for some miles above Caversham Bridge, it is when near at hand. The bridge at Caversham is one of the plainest on the Thames, and this suburb of the county town is not in any way remarkable for its romantic adornments. The bridge was nevertheless of sufficient importance to draw from "Cawsam Hill" (the rustics to this day so pronounce the word Caversham) a furious onslaught from the troops of General Ruven and Prince Rupert, who "fell upon a loose regiment that lay there to keepe the bridge, and gave them a furious assault both with their ordnance and men--one bullet being taken up by our men which weighed twenty-four pounds at the least." Sir Samuel Luke's diary, in which this scrap of history is preserved, goes on to state that the "loose regiment" made the hill "soe hott for them that they were forced to retreat, leaving behind seven bodyes of as personable men as ever were seene." And, according to Leland, there stood in the time of Henry VIII., at the north end of Caversham Bridge, "a fair old chapel of stone, on the right hand, piled in the foundation because of the rage of the Thames." In consequence of the danger in which the meadows stood of floods, in the old pre-drainage days, when the river often played pranks unknown to modern times, the bridge was constructed of stone in its most critical part, but extended partly in wood by a number of arches over the pasturage. Before the days of the Cavaliers, as far back, indeed, as 1163, Caversham Bridge was the scene of a trial by battle, adjudged by His Majesty Henry II. Henry of Essex, the King's Standard-bearer, had charged Robert de Montford with cowardice and treachery. At a fight in Wales the Standard-bearer had thrown down his flag and fled, and