The River at Richmond--A Spot for a Holiday--The Old Palace of Sheen--The Trumpeters' House--Old Sad Memories--Richmond Green--The Church--Kean's Grave--Water Supply--The Bridge--The Nunnery of Sion and Convent of Sheen--Sir William Temple--Kew Observatory, Isleworth--Sion House and its History--Kew Palace and the Georges--Kew Gardens--Kew Green--Brentford--Mortlake--Barnes--Chiswick--The Boat-race--Hammersmith--Putney--Barn Elms--Putney and Fulham--The Bishops of London--Hurlingham--The Approach to a Great City. It would be easy to find spots on the Thames where the natural features--the wood-clad slope, the grassy sward, and the gliding stream--were associated in equal beauty, but it would be difficult to meet with any more picturesque combination of these with the dwellings of men than may be seen on the river reach just below Richmond Bridge. The light-grey arches, through which the Thames flows ripplingly, are backed by the groves of Richmond Hill. On the one hand are the shady gardens and villas that now thickly stud the meadow plain of Twickenham; on the other, the houses of the town, after thronging down to the waterside at the entrance of the bridge, give place to statelier mansions with ample pleasure-grounds. It was doubtless a more imposing sight when the façade of the old palace of Sheen, which these mansions have replaced, overlooked the margin of the Thames; but it can have hardly been more picturesque than now. The low iron railing allows the eye to wander from the path by the riverside to the green pastures and lawns overshadowed by fine trees, to the old-fashioned façade of the "Trumpeters' House," while the more ambitious semi-classical design of Asgill House on the one hand, and of Queensberry House on the other, in closer proximity to the river, give an irregularity to the grouping, and perhaps accord better with the neighbouring town than the unbroken front of the Tudor palace is likely to have done. In its days, also, there were no bridges, and though the railway viaduct below might well be spared, the stone bridge must have improved a view of this kind. At any rate, this reach of the Thames is classic in art and literature; it has engaged the pencil of Turner, and is full of memories of Pope and Gay and Thomson.