Above Runnymede, dropping off the ridge of Cooper's Hill, one may come down to the pleasant town of Egham, its one long street lying a mile back from the river; but its accretions straggle on towards the bank, where the tow-path leads by havens of boating men and "Anglers' Rests" to the bridge of Staines. This is a Middlesex town, the older part of it also lying back from the Thames, upon the Colne, whose damp flats form a somewhat dreary background, not enlivened by the banks of a huge reservoir for thirsty London. But Staines has a name on the Thames through its ancient stone, marking the limit of London City's jurisdiction, thirty-six miles up the river. There may be Londoners who never heard of this stone, which made the goal of a Lord Mayor's progress eighty years ago, to be celebrated by his Lordship's chaplain in a most amusing style, by no means meant to be amusing. Having spared the reader Akenside's inscription for the column on Runnymede, I have half a mind to inflict upon him some account of this expedition, as raised to all the dignity of history, and all the interest of exploration, in the reverend gentleman's now rare volume. But it might seem too like ancient history to a generation of impatient readers, who know the Lord Mayor's State barge only from the heading of their _Illustrated London News_, and perhaps do not know how the Corporation's Admiralship has passed into the farther reaching hands of the Thames Conservancy. "Suffice it, therefore, to say that though the party were three successive days--two of which included fifteen hours--upon the water; yet, such was the fine and ever-varying nature of the home scenery around them, which was itself sufficient to engross the attention, as the Thames made its azure sweeps round slopes of meadow land; so diversified were the occupations of reading, working, and conversation--conversation which, always easy and intelligent, was often such as to discover memories containing ample registers of miscellaneous snatches and fragments of sentiments, both in prose and verse, which were sometimes applied with considerable tact and address to passing scenes; so well and interestingly, in short, were the several successive hours filled up"--that one must break off the chronicler's long-winded sentence with his own admission, that "it would be difficult and tedious to detail all the particulars" of that civic voyage.