The head-spring of the Thames is, in summer, not so easy a place to find. It rises on the borders of Wilts and Gloucestershire, and has been marked down and written about sufficiently often; but the exact spot is quested for with difficulty, and when the traveller has found it, he is, after all, not sure of his find, for the place is supplied, in these latter days, with no recognisable landmark, and even the road-men and the infrequent wayfarers along that ancient way, the Akeman Street, which runs close by, appear uncertain. That it is “over there, somewhere,” is the most exact information the enquirer is likely, at a venture, to obtain. There are excellent reasons for this distressing incertitude. The winter reason is that Trewsbury Mead, the great flat meadow in which Thames Head is situated, is so water-logged that it is often a morass, and not infrequently a lake. In summer, on the other hand, the spot is so parched, partly on account of the season, but much more by reason of the pumping-works in the immediate neighbourhood, that not only the Thames Head spring is quite dry, but the bed of the infant Thames itself is generally dry for the first two miles of its course. Thames Head is situated three miles south-west of Cirencester, that beautiful old stone-built town whose name we are traditionally told to pronounce “Ciceter,” just as Shakespeare wrote it. That was the old popular way, before the folks of the surrounding country could read or write, and knew no better; but to-day, when “education” is the birthright of all, though culture be the acquisition of few, they are the rustic-folk—the “lower orders”—who say “Cirencester,” as my lords and gentlemen and ladies were wont to do; while nowadays the upper circles refer to “Ciceter.” It is a curious reversal. If you say, in these times, “Cirencester,” you, in so doing, proclaim yourself, socially, an outsider, fit only to feed out of the same trough as those creatures who pronounce “Marjoribanks,” “Cholmondeley,” or “Wemyss” as spelled. We all know—or ought—that “Marshbanks,” “Chumley,” and “Weems” are your only ways, if you would be socially saved. These are the last resorts of those who have no other distinction to mark them out from the common herd: just a verbal inflection, combined, possibly, with a method of hand-shaking. To what straits we are reduced, in these democratic times, to express our superiority! There is another way to the pronunciation of “Cirencester,” lately come into favour with provincials of this neighbourhood. It is a method of the simplest: merely the adoption of the clipped way common to the local milestones, which tell the tale of so many miles to “Ciren.”