The space between the two bridges seems to invite the traveller to linger. Fresh, perchance, from the streets of London, the odours of the underground railway still in his nostrils, the vapour of its smoky streets still lingering in his lungs, a little heated, it may be, and still mindful of towns in his walk from the railway station through Richmond streets to the bridge, he walks rapidly for a brief space along the towing-path, and then perforce halts in another and a new land. If, fortunately, he has chosen a day still early in the summer, before the average Londoner has quite realised that it is time to begin to take "an outing;" if he has arrived on the spot at an hour when the rowdy element, still, unhappily, too prominent among the dwellers in our metropolis, has not yet broken the peace of the Thames by those simian howlings or that loud-voiced blasphemy, which is deemed expressive of pleasure, then he will find it hard to detach himself from this reach of the river, and will imitate the elders of Richmond, two or three of whom he will generally find sunning or shading themselves on the benches near the waterside. Is it not enough to watch the trees almost dipping their branches in the stream, to find excitement in the hovering of a fly over its surface, in the splash of a fish, or even in the tiny swirls of the stream itself? In this dreamy calm which steals so quickly over us we watch the hovering butterfly or the flitting dragon-fly, the little dramas of animal life, their comedy or their tragedy, with an interest that causes the graver issues which we left behind barely an hour ago to fade from the mind. What more do we need after the noise of the streets than this perfect calm of the air, undisturbed save by the faint rustle of the breeze among the leaves, or the twittering note of a bird? What more, after the dusty pavements, than these glimpses of green lawn, of summer flowers in garden-beds or pendant from wall and trellis; of shadowy walks under green trees of Britain or darkling cedars from Lebanon? As we dream, memories rise of a dead-and-gone past--of many an episode of English history which is connected with this little reach of our river, perhaps the most classic ground on the Thames outside the precincts of the metropolis. Kings and queens, many a lord and lady of high degree, many a man on whom genius has conferred a place in history which birth alone cannot give, have loved to linger along this bit of Thames-side, or to float idly on its stream. "Their mirth is sped; their gravest theme Sleeps with the things that cease to be; Their longest life, a morning gleam; A bubble bursting on the stream, Then swept to Time's unfathomed sea."--/Kenyon./ But let us awaken from our reveries to dwell more particularly upon the memories called up by the Thames below Richmond Bridge.