'Good-night, Ellen. Sleep sound and wake early!' I don't know what I should do if she did n't say that now. ... Oh dear, I sometimes think . whatever should I do if anything were to. .. But, there, thinking's no good to anyone is it Madam? Thinking won't help. Not that I do it often. And if ever I do I pull myself up sharp: 'Now then, Ellen. At it again you silly girl! If you can't find anything better to do than to start thinking!...

SHELLEY loved to be near water nearly all poets have had a like affection for it and from the days of his childhood at Field Place, where he played at boats on the fish ponds (they have long since disappeared) until he became the owner of the ill-fated yacht Ariel, the poet was never for long away from the element which was to quench his ardent spirit at last.

When at school at Brentford, Shelley and his friend Medwin would play truant and row to Kew, and once they went as far as Richmond to see Mrs. Jordan as Peggy in Garrick's comedy of The Country Girl. (It was of this charming actress that Leigh Hunt said: "The very sound of the little familiar word "bud" from her lips was the whole concentrated world of the power of loving'-'bud' being Peggy's pet name for her guardian.) And this was Shelley's first visit to a theatre.

Though we hear of Shelley rowing in a regatta at Eton, it does not appear that he did much boating either there or at Oxford; but he would have spent much of his time by the riverside, and in 'The Boat on the Serchio' he refers to pleasant recollections of his schooldays:

Those bottles of warm tea (Give me some straw) - must be stowed tenderly;

Such as we used, in summer after six,

To cram in great-coat pockets, and to mix
Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton,
And, couched on stolen hay in those green
harbors

Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys called arbors,

Would feast till eight.

Fond as Shelley was of water, it does not appear that he ever learned to swim, though his constant companions in Italy were Trelawny and Byron, both almost amphibious. To the former he said: 'Why can't I

swim?- it seems so very easy.' His companion replied: 'Because you think you can't; take a header off this bank and, when you rise, turn on your back; you will float like a duck.'

The poet dragged off his clothes and obediently plunged in; but, instead of floating, he, in Trelawny's words, 'lay stretched out on the bottom like a conger-eel, not making the least effort to save himself. He would have been drowned if I had not instantly fished him out.'

In the management of a sailing boat Shelley was no more efficient; and we are told of an occasion on board the Ariel when there was a dreadful confusion of ropes and tiller, and how Williams, who was instructing, cried 'Luff'; Shelley put the helm the wrong way, his hat was knocked overboard, and he nearly followed it. In river navigation Shelley was more at home than in the management of a yacht, and he could take an oar and stick to his seat against any force of current or wind, though it should involve several miles of hard pulling.

Shelley's quaint fancy for making and launching fleets of little paper boats is well known, and many of his companions have referred to it. In Wales he would sail a wooden boat in the mountain streams, and once improvised a sail for it out of a bank note; a pond near Primrose Hill, another in the Vale of Health, Hampstead, a pool in the heath above Bracknell, the Serpentine River, and, later, a bowl of quicksilver in Henry Reveley's workshop at Leghorn, bore these little argosies, laden with many fantasies.

In 1815 Shelley and his wife Mary were living in a cottage at Bishopgate, a remote and secluded spot on the border of Windsor Forest, which had probably been found for them by their good friend Thomas Love Peacock, whose school days had been passed

near by at Englefield Green; it w this friend, the author of The Genius the Thames, who suggested the riv trip which forms the motif of th article.

So let us, in imagination, set for from Windsor toward the end August 1815, with Shelley, Mary, a his friends Peacock and Charles Cla mont, to visit the source of the Thame The weather, that most importa item of a boating excursion, was, v are told, fine, but not too hot for ro ing, and the Thames, as those who lo it know, is never more delightful the in the serene days of early autum when stillness and peace seem to bro over the river and the light mists morning and evening wreathe it with a veil.

The trip to Lechlade took about to days. Starting from Windsor, one ma indicate a probable itinerary for tl voyage, for unfortunately the dia which Mary kept during the trip h been lost or destroyed, and so throug out one must reconstruct the journe of these to-be-envied travelers, an like Dick Swiveller's Marchiones 'make believe very much'; and, aft all, making believe is often pleasan too. The party was entirely happy Shelley wildly so, and in his face shor the ruddy, healthy complexion autumn, and, as Peacock relates, I was twice as fat as he used to be.

Perhaps the increase of weight an the glow of health may have been du in some measure to a diet more gene ous and regular than that to which th poet was accustomed; always simp to abstemiousness, he had been 'livin chiefly on tea and bread and butte drinking occasionally a sort of spuriou lemonade made of powder in a box

Peacock prescribed, and probabl exhibited, peppered mutton chops, an Shelley during the trip accepted th innovation and throve on it.

The first day's journey would take the little party as far as Cookham one may suppose that they took things easily and made about twelve miles each day and on the way the beauties of Cleveden's woods must have appealed to them all. Shelley may have recalled Pope's lines on the profligate Duke of Buckingham (who built the original mansion) and his no less abandoned mistress, the Countess of Shrewsbury: she it was who, in the habit of a page, held her lover's horse while he fought with, and killed, her husband:

Gallant and gay, in Cleveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love. At Cookham, perhaps that old-fashioned inn the 'Bell and the Dragon' may have afforded entertainment; it is the only inn we have met with named after the remarkable adventure of the astute and far-seeing Daniel.

Marlow would be sure to attract Shelley, for his friend Peacock lived there, and would discourse of its beauties: so by the high-pitched wooden bridge and the pretty old-fashioned church (both gone, alas!) the party would surely land and make their way into the town and to Peacock's house. Shelley was to know Marlow well before long, for it was there that a year later he went to live (forever, as he said), in order to be near the silver winding way which he had learned to love, and to enjoy the society of his friend.

Albion House, which the poet took on a twenty-one years' lease as 'a fixed, settled, eternal home,' has been altered but little externally, but it has become, instead of one house, three cottages. It stands about half a mile from the river in West Street, which was in 1816 a country road, and old views show it as detached; it is not so now. The house, which is quaintly picturesque, had a

pleasant garden (a pretty picture of this by G. D. Leslie was exhibited at the Academy some years ago). There was also a spacious room which Shelley used as a library. The interior disposition was necessarily much altered when the change was made some seventy years ago; but a room in which the writer has often slept, that on the right of the first floor, was said forty years ago by the then landlady to be, traditionally, Shelley's bedroom.

The happy dreams of too sanguine Shelley were unfulfilled: the 'forever' dwindled to a year, for the house, like many of its time, was cold and damp, and there was no view of the river from any of its windows. When the glories of summer had faded, the poet's health and spirits failed, and before the swallows came again he had departed to Italy, never to return.

Shortly after leaving Marlow, Peacock would surely indicate haunted Bisham Abbey to the lover of the mysterious and tell the story of the poor boy who suffered so cruelly for the blotting of his copy books. All this neighborhood was soon to become a favorite haunt of the poet, notably the willow-fringed island near Medmenham, where he would muse and compose, returning to Marlow wreathed with flowers:

here young Shelley oft would dream, And oft declaim,

While yet he wandered by thy stream,
Unknown to fame.

A hundred years ago he faced
The mystic portals,

And Fame long since his name has placed
With the Immortals,

as a poet of the Thames has written.

Medmenham Abbey would be known to Peacock, and he could tell of the Hell-fire Club, founded by Lord le Despencer, which numbered among its members the Earl of Sandwich, Bubb

there may be still. And, toward evening, Henley and the old 'Red Lion.' It was there, tradition tells us, that Shenstone scratched on a window pane his eulogy of inns in general:

Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
His warmest welcome at an inn.

The 'Lion' has been much altered of late years; one can no longer drive under the archway to the coachyardthe archway characteristic of all the old coaching inns, on one side of which was the commercial room and the cozy bar, on the other the coffee-room.

Henley has changed, too. The timbered houses that made Hart Street glorious have gone; though there are still some of the Georgian period, with mellow bricks and small-paned sashes, and when their massive doors are open pleasant vistas of garden are revealed; but ugly new buildings, plate glass and picture palaces have destroyed the charm of Henley.

Forty years ago the old town was a quiet, drowsy place, save at Regatta time, and the writer recalls it most clearly as it used to look on fine, still days at the end of August, which was the time of Shelley's visit: a few loungers have gathered outside the 'Catherine Wheel,' some dogs lie dozing in the sunshine, there is a touch of autumn in the air, and a belated

minstrel troupe are singing 'When the Swallows Nest Again.' On leaving E Henley the voyagers would embark from the wharf by the bridge, and Mary would steer them past the island on the barge stream side to Marsh Lock.

After leaving Marsh Lock the party might follow the main stream to Wargrave, or fortuitously, the secluded Heneton backwater, the prettiest on the Thames, albeit now too well known.

At the 'George and Dragon,' what ducks and green peas Mrs. Wyatt provided for us in old days! Perhaps some refreshment was taken, but it would be too early for dinner, and, setting out again, the outlet of sylvan and secluded Patrick's Stream and Shiplake Lock would be passed, and so to Sonning and dinner at the 'White Hart':

To the music of trees

In sight of the swift river running Off cuts of roast beef and a prime Cheddar cheese,

And a tankard of bitter at Sonning,

as a minstrel of a later date has sung. The White Hart' is changed and modernized, like so many of the river inns, and the shades of Mr. and Mrs. Lockley, those kindly hosts, if they revisit the glimpses of the moon, must wander forlorn amid the new surroundings.

Enthusiasts such as Shelley and his friend could not fail to be charmed with the summer evening outlook from the bowers of roses in the garden of the old 'White Hart.' They would see the sunset glowing on the bridge and gilding the burnished wings of the swallows as they passed under its arches, the lengthening shadows of the great elms which stood on the opposite bank would fall at their feet, and there would be none but congruous sounds the cawing of the homeward-bound rooks or the splash of a rising fish.

Beautiful Sonning bridge was threatened with destruction a few years ago; soulless vandals proposed to set in its place an iron-girder bridge. Is there any country so deplorably lacking in reverence for, and care of, its architectural treasures as our own?

The day's work would terminate at Caversham, and the old 'White Hart' (long since pulled down) by the bridge was an inn well known for its comforts.

From Caversham the river is uninteresting until Mapledurham Lock and the adjoining mill make amends. It may be that Shelley landed here to see Mapledurham House, for it was in this Elizabethan home that Mr. Pope used to visit the Misses Blount and write his pungent epistles. This sixteenth-century house could not escape the notice of those who loved beautiful things: it is built of warm red brick; it has, as Dickens wrote of the Maypole Inn, 'more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day'; there is a secret passage, antique furniture, and a wonderful set of pewter to delight the heart of the connoisseur.

One of the old inns at Wallingford would be the next stopping place, and from thence onward is some of the most typical of Thames sceneryquiet, peaceful reaches, secluded bays, homes of the lily and the dragon-fly, weirs from which the spray of tumbling water brings the fresh keen scent of weeds and rushes.

And this was just such a ministration as Mary and Shelley were in need of after the fever and the fret which they had endured, separated from each other, save for brief and dangerous meetings (Shelley was threatened with arrest for debt) on dull November days in Gray's Inn Gardens, Kentish Town Fields and Staples Inn; they passed from one cheap lodging to another, and when at last reunited they lacked the means to procure food.

There is a pathetic record in Mary's journal of these trials: 'People want their money: won't send up dinner, and we are very hungry.. Shelley goes to Peacock's: comes home with little cakes.' The winter of this discontent must have seemed like some ill dream to Mary and Shelley in the calm happiness of their river holiday.

Shelley and his party arrived at Oxford in the evening, and left at four o'clock the next day. We get an authentic glimpse of them rambling through the town, contemplating the very rooms where the two infidels Shelley and Hogg had so often heard the chimes at midnight and debated so many problems; they visited the Bodleian Library too, now by a strange vicissitude become the depository for precious memorials and relics of the poet-pioneer, whose philosophy was so shocking to the exiguous minds of the authorities of his day.

Above Oxford the valley with its wooded slopes is left behind and the breezes blow, fresh and free, over a champaign of pasture fields and watermeadows.

Passing Port Meadow, populous with grazing geese, the wherry would soon be beside the ruins of Godstow Nunnery, and Peacock the antiquary would have much to say of Fair Rosamond, and how her royal lover 'had made for her a house of wonderful working; so that no man or woman might come to her, but he that was instructed by the King, or such as were right secret with him touching the matter.' In Godstow Nunnery Rosamond Clifford (a pretty name) was laid to rest; it had been her home in youthful and innocent days, and there for many years she slept in peace.

It was left to Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, to be less tolerant than the Scribes and Pharisees of old.

Coming into the church to pray, ‘he