The oldest historical incident of all in connection with the Thames is the supposed crossing of Cæsar at Cowey Stakes, above Walton Bridge. Some strong wooden stakes, black and tough with age, and metal-capped, were found driven into the bed of the river at this point. They are supposed to have been driven in by the Britons to hinder the crossing of Cæsar in B.C. 54. As it is known that Cæsar did cross the river some eighty miles above the sea, and as a Roman camp was discovered in the neighbourhood, it is quite possible that anyone standing on Walton Bridge, looking over the wide peaceful stretch of river above, is really surveying the stage on which one of the earliest acts in our great national drama was played. The unhappy Henry VI, too weak to bear without misery to himself the responsibility life thrust upon him, sleeps at Chertsey. His body, after being exposed at Blackfriars, was brought here on a barge--a slow procession and a sad one. In _Richard III_ Shakespeare makes the hyprocritical Duke of Gloucester say: After I have solemnly interred At Chertsey monastery this noble king, And wet his grave with my repentant tears. Not far from the resting-place of Henry VI, a great statesman, Charles James Fox, was born. What a gap in time and manners and customs is here suggested. To think of the two is to span the distance between generations of growth and thought. Fox died at Chiswick House, so his life began and ended by Thames side. In the same house, twenty years later, died another great statesman, George Canning. Thus, even without reckoning London itself, the centre of our national life and history, we find the Thames can show names famous in literature, in history, and in politics. Its banks are studded with memories as they are with flowers, and in contemplation and reminiscence the annals of the centuries flow past us as the water itself flows by, ever smoothly and unceasingly. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Thames, by G. E. Mitton