e more
in its favor than had that of the cinque-cento.

UP THE THAMES

THIRD PAPER.

[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--WEST FRONT.]

Today our movement shall be up the Thames by rail, starting on the
south side of the river to reach an objective point on the north bank.
So crooked is the stream, and so much more crooked are the different
systems of railways, with their competing branches crossing each other
and making the most audacious inroads on each other's territory, that
the direction in which we are traveling at any given moment, or the
station from which we start, is a very poor index to the quarter for
which we are bound. The railways, to say nothing of the river, that
wanders at its own sweet will, as water commonly does in a country
offering it no obstructions, are quite defiant of their geographical
names. The Great Western runs north, west and south-east; the
South-western strikes south, south-east and north-west; while
the Chatham and Dover distributes itself over most of the region
south-east of London, closing its circuit by a line along the coast
of the Channel that completes a triangle. We can go almost anywhere
by any road. It is necessary, however, in this as in other mundane
proceedings, to make a selection. We must have a will before we find
a way. Let our way, then, be to Waterloo Station on the Southwestern
rail.

[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--LOOKING UP THE RIVER.]

Half an hour's run lands us at Hampton Court, with a number of
fellow-passengers to keep us company if we want them, and in fact
whether we want them or not. Those who travel into or out of a city of
four millions must lay their account with being ever in a crowd.
Our consolation is, that in the city the crowd is so constant and so
wholly strange to us as to defeat its effect, and create the feeling
of solitude we have so often been told of; while outside of it, at the
parks and show-places, the amplitude of space, density and variety of
plantations, and multiplicity of carefully designed turns, nooks and
retreats, are such that retirement of a more genuine character is
within easy reach. The crowd, we know, is about us, but it does
not elbow us, and we need hardly see it. The current of humanity,
springing from one or a dozen trains or steamboats, dribbles away,
soon after leaving its parent source, into a multitude of little
divergent channels, like irrigating water, and covers the surface
without interference.

It wo