From Strand-on-the-Green the view of the Thames is no less fascinating than that from Hammersmith and Chiswick Malls, for even at low tide, when gleaming stretches of mud line the banks on either side, the colour effects are charming. Higher up, too, where the little river Brent--that with the Brentford Canal forms part of a great system of inland waterways--flows into the Thames, a touch of poetry still lingers, in spite of the fact that the once beautiful village named after the ancient ford has become one of the most prosaic of the Middlesex suburbs. The three-arched bridge that spanned the Brent a little above its mouth, at which a toll used to be levied on all cattle and merchandise and all Jews and Jewesses crossing it on foot or on horseback, though Christians were allowed to pass over free, is replaced by a modern one with but one arch; the house in which the notorious Noy, chancellor to Charles IL, decided on the re-imposition of the hated ship-tax has been pulled down; the ancient market-hall, with its high-pitched roof, that had been the scene of many a hotly contested election, and in which resounded during the riots of 1769 the cry of 'Wilkes and Liberty!' was pulled down in 1850 to make way for the present {275} town-hall, and a little later its fate was shared by the famous half-timbered hostelry of the Three Pigeons, that may possibly have been visited by Shakespeare when it was tenanted by one of the actors in his company, John Lowen. Vanished, too, is the house in which John Bunyan lived at the beginning of his crusade against vice in high places; but here and there, in what is still known as the Half Acre district, that is intimately associated with the memory of the author of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and also in the modern High Street, a few ancient tenements, with lofty, many-gabled roofs, survive to bear witness to olden times. Moreover, about half a mile from what is now known as New Brentford, though it is really more venerable than the rest of the town, is another link with the past: Burton House, a mansion occupying the site of the manor-house of Burston, or Budeston, that belonged before the suppression of the monasteries to St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and was later owned by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. [Illustration: THE CANAL, BRENTFORD]