urch, and
then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling
the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads,--a
proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs
and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head,
dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two,--we arrive at
the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges
that cross the Thames, so narrow that no two vehicles can pass at once,
and that over every pier triangular spaces have been devised for the
safety of foot passengers. On the centre arch is a fisherman's hut,
occupying the place once filled by a friar's cell, and covering a still
existing chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, now put to secular
uses--a dairy or a cellar.

A little way down the river is one of the beautiful islands of the
Thames, now a smooth and verdant meadow, edged round with old willow
pollards calmly reflected in the bright, clear waters, but giving back
in the twelfth century a far different scene. Here was fought a wager of
battle between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex,
hereditary Standard-bearer of the kings of England, defendant, by
command, and in the presence of Henry the Second. The story is told very
minutely and graphically by Stowe. Robert de Montford at length struck
down his adversary, "who fell," says the old historian, "after receiving
many wounds; and the King, at the request of several noblemen, his
relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding
that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the
vanquished knight, and carried him into the abbey, where he revived.
When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community,
and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the
King." I have always thought that this story would afford excellent
scope to some great novelist, who might give a fair and accurate picture
of monastic life, and, indeed, of the monastic orders, as landlords,
neighbors, teachers, priests, without any mixture of controversial
theology, or inventing any predecessors of Luther or Wicliffe. How we
should have liked to have heard all about "The Monastery," about the
"Abbot" and Father Eustace, untroubled by Henry Warden or John Knox!
From the moment that they appear, our comfort in the book vanishes, just
as completely as that of the good easy Abbot Boniface