quantity might be sold. I have been writing about Highland streams and northern lochs; but the river scenery of England is, in its way, equally beautiful, and no river is more charming than the Thames. It is a classic stream, and its praises have been sung by the poets and celebrated by the historian. After Mrs. S. C. Hall and Thorne, it were vain to repeat its praises:— “Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames! that anglers all may see As lovely visions by thy side, As now, fair river, come to me. Oh, glide, fair stream, for ever so Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, Till all our minds for ever flow As thy deep waters are now flowing.” The Thames takes its rise in Gloucestershire, about three miles from the town of Cirencester; and at that place, and for some miles of its course, it is known as the Isis, and not till the waters of the Thame join it in Oxfordshire is it known as the _Thames_. This celebrated river is small at first, and flows through some beautiful scenery and highly-cultivated country; its banks are studded with castles and palaces, beautiful towns and snug villages; while well-stored gardens and cultivated fields give smiling evidence of plenty all along its course. When we consider that the Thames flows past Windsor, Hampton Court, and Richmond; that it laves the grassy lawns of Twickenham, waters the gardens of Kew, and that it bears upon its bosom the gigantic commerce of London—we can at once realise its importance, and can understand its being called the king of British rivers, although it is neither so long, nor does it contain so voluminous a body of water as some other of our British streams. The total length of the river Thames is 215 miles, and the area of the country it waters is 6160 square miles. It has as affluents a great many fine streams, including the river Lodden, as also the Wey and the Mole. I am not entitled to consider it here in its picturesque aspects—my business with it is piscatorial, and I am able to certify that it is rich in fish of a certain kind— “The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel in shining volumes rolled, The yellow carp in scales bedropp’d with gold, Swift trout diversified with crimson stains, And pike, the tyrants of the watery plains.”