A. C. B.






INTRODUCTION

1





I walked to-day down by the river side. The Cam is a stream much
slighted by the lover of wild and romantic scenery; and its chief
merit, in the eyes of our boys, is that it approaches more nearly
to a canal in its straightness and the deliberation of its slow
lapse than many more famous floods--and is therefore more adapted
for the maneuvres of eight-oared boats! But it is a beautiful
place, I am sure; and my ghost will certainly walk there, "if our
loves remain," as Browning says, both for the sake of old memories
and for the love of its own sweet peaceableness. I passed out of
the town, out of the straggling suburbs, away from tall, puffing
chimneys, and under the clanking railway bridge; and then at once
the scene opens, wide pasture-lands on either side, and rows of old
willows, the gnarled trunks holding up their clustered rods. There
on the other side of the stream rises the charming village of Fen
Ditton, perched on a low ridge near the water, with church and