rounds there is a quaint brick gateway,
which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present pile. The
grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry VIII., improved
and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones, and then
destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very beautiful, and
the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in "short windings and
reaches." Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera Thamesis, as it was called
by Guillaume le Breton in his "Phillipeis," in the days of Richard the
Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still recall Norman days, for they
are "wild and were;" and there is even yet a wary otter or two, known to
the gypsies and fishermen, which may be seen of moonlight nights plunging
or swimming silently in the haunted water.

Now we pass Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the massy
Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted glass, and the brasses. One
of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the royal park of
Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the village, says that
Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare skill in horsemanship.
Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present at a stag hunt, he leaped from his
horse upon the back of the stag, while both were running at full speed,
kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal towards the queen, and
stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her majesty's feet. It was
daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who loved a proper man, was well
pleased. The brass plate represents Selwyn as riding on the stag, and
there is in the village a shop where the neat old dame who presides, or
her daughter, will sell you for a penny a picture of the plate, and tell
you the story into the bargain. In it the valiant ranger sits on the
stag, which he is stabbing through the neck with his _couteau de chasse_,
looking meanwhile as solemn as if he were sitting in a pew and listening
to _De profundis_. He who is great in one respect seldom fails in some
other, and there is in the church another and a larger brass, from which
it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who
are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by
Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar
lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of
Butler's "Hudibras." And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to
his memory,