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THE Thames, unrivalled among English rivers in beauty as in fame, is really little known by Englishmen. Of the millions who line its banks, few have any acquaintance with its higher streams, or know them further than by occasional glances through rail way-carriage windows, at Maidenhead, Reading, Pangbourne, or between Abingdon and Oxford. Multitudes, even, who love the Oxford waters, and are familiar with every turn of the banks between Folly Bridge and Nuneham, have never thought to explore the scenes of surpassing beauty where the river flows on, almost in loneliness, in its descent to London; visited by few, save by those happy travellers, who, with boat and tent, pleasant companionship, and well-chosen books—Izaak Walton's Angler among the rest—pass leisurely from reach to reach of the silver stream. Then, higher up than Oxford, who knows the Thames? Who can even tell where it arises, and through what district it flows?

There is a vague belief in many minds, fostered by some ancient manuals of geography, that the Thames is originally the Isis, so called until it receives the river Thame, the auspicious union being denoted by the pluralising of the latter word. The whole account is pure invention. No doubt the great river does receive the Thame or Tame, near Wallingford; but a Tame is also tributary to the Trent; and there is a Teme among the affluents of the Severn. The truth appears to be that Teme, Tame, or Thame, is an old Keltic word meaning "smooth," or "broad;" and that Tamesis, of which Thames is merely a contraction, is formed by the addition to this root of the old "Es," water, so familiar to us in "Ouse," * "Esk," "Uiske," "Exe," so that Tam-es means simply the "broad water," and is Latinised into Tamesis. The last two syllables again of this word are fancifully changed into Isis, which is thus taken as a poetic appellation of the river. In point of fact, Isis is used only by the poets, or by those who affect poetic diction. Thus, Warton, in his address to Oxford:

The name, then, of the Thames is singular, not plural; while yet the river is formed of many confluent streams descending from the Cotswold Hills. Which is the actual source is perhaps a question of words; and yet it is one as keenly contended, and by as many competing localities, as the birthplace of Homer was of old. Of the seven, however, only two can show a plausible case. The traditional Thames Head is in Trewsbury Mead, three miles from Cirencester, not far from the Tetbury Road Station, on the Great Western Railway, and hard by the old Roman road of Akeman Street, one of the four ** that radiate from Cirencester, or, as the Romans called the city, Corinium. Here the infant stream is at once pressed into service, its waters being pumped up into the Thames and Severn Canal, whose high embankment forms the back-ground to the wooded nook which forms the cradle of the river. It is an impressive comment on the reported saying of Brindley the engineer, that "the great use of rivers is to feed canals." Half-a-mile farther down, and when clear of the great pumping-engine, the baby river issues again to light in a secluded dell, and now has room to wander at its own sweet will. The cut on the preceding page delineates its early course, and shows "the Hoar Stone," an ancient boundary, mentioned in a charter of King Æthelstan, a.d. 931.

The river now receives a succession of tiny rivulets, which augment its volume and force until, near the village of Kemble, it is crossed by a rustic bridge,—"the first bridge over the Thames," as depicted for us in the charming volume of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, with its three narrow arches, and its sides undefended by a parapet, with the solitary figures of the labourer and his boy, wending their way home after work.

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What a contrast with the last bridge that spans the river, with its mighty sweep of traffic below and above!

But we must dally yet among scenes of rural quietude. A few miles beyond Kemble, the Thames has acquired force sufficient to turn a mill. Hence, leaving the highway, and taking our path through pleasant meadows, we pass by one or two rural villages, and so to Cricklade, the first market-town on the Thames. And here a considerable affluent joins the stream—a river, in fact, that has come down from another part of the Cotswold Hills, with some show of right to be the original stream.

This is the Churn (or Corin; Keltic "The Summit"), which rises at "the Seven Springs," in a rocky hill-side, about three miles from Cheltenham, and runs by Cirencester (Corin-cester) down to Cricklade. I he claim of the Churn is the twofold one, of greater height in its source than the traditional meadows and beside quiet villages: much, to say the truth, like other rivers, or distinguished only by the transparency of its gentle stream. For, issuing from a broad surface of oolite rock, it has brought no mountain débris or dull clay to sully its brightness, no town defilement, nor trace of higher rapids, in turbid waves and hurrying foam. It lingers amid quiet beauties, scarcely veiling from sight the rich herbarium which it fosters in its bed, save where the shadows of trees reflected in the calm water mingle confusedly with the forms of aquatic plants. Meanwhile other streams swell the current. As an unknown poet somewhat loftily sings:

Of the little streams thus loftily described, the most important are the Coln and the Leche; as Drayton has it in his Polyolbion:

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The confluence of these streams with the Thames at Lechlade makes the river navigable for barges; and from this point it sets up a towingpath. At this point also end may be seen—a distant glimmering circle—from the other. Then the canal pursues a level course for some miles, and descends about 130 feet to the Thames at Lechlade, having