the gloaming the ruminating, sweet-breathed kine loom mistily as they lie sociably grouped under the lee of a protecting hedge. On the river twinkle through the gathering night the lamps of the house-boats, the Chinese lanterns, depending from the overhanging roofs, glowing through their fantastic filaments like great transparent fire-flies. And but for the rush of the weirs, the dip of a belated oar, and an occasional ring of laughter from the huge, blackly-outlined boats, the night is silent. /J. Penderel-Brodhurst/. [Illustration: THE THAMES AT STREATLEY.] CHAPTER IV. STREATLEY TO HENLEY. Streatley, the Artists' Mecca--Goring versus Streatley--Goring from the Toll-gate--Streatley Mill--Weirs and Backwaters--Antiquity of Streatley and Goring--Goring Church--Common Wood--Basildon Ferry and Hart's Wood--A Thames Osier Farm--Whitchurch Lock--Pangbourne--Hardwicke House and Mapledurham--Caversham Bridge--Reading and its Abbey--A Divergence to the Kennet, with calls at Marlborough, Hungerford, and Newbury--The Charms of Sonning--"The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned"--St. Patrick's Stream--Shiplake Weir--Wargrave and Bolney Court--Park Place--Marsh Lock--Remarks on Thames Angling--The Approach to Henley. "The village swarms with geniuses and their æsthetically dressed wives," was the touching lament written in "Our River" by Mr. Leslie, R.A., with regard to the Berkshire village of Streatley. The sentence is, in some senses, both a description of the place as you may see it at almost any time during the summer season, and an indication of the reason of its popularity amongst artists. No doubt it is the fashion in the sketching months for mere idlers at the palette to saunter and pose up and down the village street, in company with the strangely-dressed women-kind who some years ago provoked an outburst from a Royal Academician. But it is also, and has long been, the resort of genuine workers with the brush, who make Streatley their temporary home because, in the long white bridge, shady backwaters, lively weir, busy mills, woods, and hills, they find materials worthy of their ambition and their care. In the Thames Valley this portion of the river may be pronounced the Mecca of landscape painters. Streatley, however, is the fashion, because it is honestly deserving of such a distinction. Unlike many popular stations, it does not owe repute to one distinguishing attraction, but to many advantages which, in combination, raise the village to a high position upon the catalogue of places to be enjoyed, talked about, sketched in water colours, immortalised in oil, and haunted by the inoffensive people referred to in the first line of this chapter.