spot with Boyle Farm on the opposite side of the road. Dark brown of hue, and not unpicturesque of contour, Boyle Farm stands amid effective masses of foliage, its sloping lawn dipping down to the channel formed by a miniature eyot which screens it somewhat from view. The ample cedars on the lawn contrast well with the older portions of the house which face the water. This pretty spot obtained its name from that Miss Boyle who became in her own right Baroness de Ros, and is mentioned in one of Horace Walpole's letters as having "carved three tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself ... for a chimney-piece, and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library." By her marriage with Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Lady De Ros became sister-in-law to that ill-starred pair, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and "Pamela." Time was when Boyle Farm rivalled Strawberry Hill as a centre of gaiety, and its famous "Dandies' Fête," given in 1827 by five young sprigs of nobility at a cost of £2,500, was long a dazzling wonderment to those who are tickled by such things. This was one of the hereditaments which fell into dispute upon the death, without a will, of the first Lord St. Leonards. To the angler it may be that the comfortable old inn is more interesting than Boyle Farm with its Walpolean memories. Many is the wit and the man of letters who, after a day of more or less make-believe angling, has refreshed himself at the "Swan." Theodore Hook delighted in Thames Ditton, and wrote some stanzas in its praise in a punt one day in 1834; it was natural that with so keen a lover of good living the "Swan" should come in for eulogy. [Illustration: THE "SWAN," THAMES DITTON.]