Putney is a suburb of much respectability, rising on to heights of gentility at the back, and merging with the super-gentility of Roehampton's palatial villas. In future this birthplace of Gibbon may also be known as abode of the poet Swinburne. At present it has an annual hour of clamorous fame as starting-place of the University boat-race. In the past it made an appearance in history as headquarters of Cromwell's army during the autumn of 1647, while negotiations went on with the Parliament at Westminster on one hand, and with the King at Hampton Court on the other. The church, then used as a council hall, has one fine old feature in the chantry of Bishop West; and the way in which it faces the corresponding tower of Fulham has provoked a legend of their having been built by two giant sisters, who, as in the case of St. Catherine's and St. Martha's Chapel near Guildford, are credited with using one hammer between them, which they flung backwards and forwards across the river. Putney, as yet unfettered by tramways, is closely linked with London by motor-buses plying all the way to northern and eastern suburbs, as well as by trains of more than one line. But now the tow-path fails us, and we must take ship to keep an eye on the Surrey shores. A little below, the river will touch the four-mile-circle from Charing Cross. Once more it is bordered by trees and lawns, but these belong to Hurlingham Club and to Wandsworth's new park; and it has far to go before reaching green fields again on the shores of Kent and Essex. Shades of its prison-house close in upon it fast, beginning with the group of grimy wharves and mills amid which ends the bedraggled Wandle, turned to many a task from its source to its mouth. The old buildings of Wandsworth have been vanishing like the Mayoralty of Garratt Green behind it; but it has still some quaint nooks, and the true Surrey feature of its open Common.