water's edge. The stream, says our author, "was frozen over thinely,"
but Miller "makes no more adoe, but venters over the haven, which is
by the long bridge, as I gesse some forty yards over; yet he made
nothing of it, but my hart aked when my eares heard the ise crack all
the way. When he was come unto me," continues Armin, "I was amazed,
and tooke up a brick-bat, which lay there by, and threw it, which no
sooner fell upon the ise but it burst. Was not this strange that a
foole of thirty yeeres was borne of that ise which would not endure
the fall of a brick-bat?"! The fact that Robert Armin and William
Shakespeare were fellow-actors at the Globe Theatre lends probability
to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps' elucidation.

Continuing our way beyond the Crown Hotel we see on our right, below
the level of the street, a quaint row of gables with little shops
below quite unchanged by the present conditions of trade. Passing
onward towards the bridge we shall see to the best advantage the full
effect of this most picturesque of streets.

Alas! that modern enterprise and modern requirements should have
demanded the removal of such a bridge as fifty years ago spanned the
stream in eight irregular arches. Here we have convenience, but will
this condone for the charm of picturesqueness and long association? We
cannot but mourn over the loss. From the bridge we look up the river
to the weir, mill and water-meadows. On the right, by the yard not far
up the stream, stood, in the troublous reign of King Stephen a castle;
and from this fortress William de Beauchamp sallied forth, forcibly
entered the Abbey, and carried away the goods of the Church. But an
abbot in those days was quite equal to meeting a hereditary sheriff on
his own ground. Abbot William de Andeville descended on the castle,
took it, razed it to the ground, and consecrated the site as a