in practice from the Lion and Angel window, as of old, It is not so much as twenty years ago that steamers were unknown on the reach. The ‘ Ariel’ (the fate Mr, Jlyth’s) was the first of her kind built by Mr. Thornycroft, Till then, row-boats had the reach to themselves. We are old enough to recall the Red Lion flourishing as a coaching inn; then came its breakdown, when ‘rail’ broke the road, and it shut up, until Mrs, Williams, the veteran landlady, who erst welcomed, and is still welcomed by, so many retired yenerations of oarsmen, migrated from the Catherine Wheel in 1858, and re-opened the Lion once more.
‘The strength of amateur talent is treble what it was twenty-five years ago, After the pristine Leander retired from action, and the St. George’s shut up, and the Old Thames Club dispersed, the Univer- sitics had Henley alinost to themselves as to eights and fours until Chester woke them up in eighis in 1856, and the Argonauts four a year or two before produced the nucleus of the talent which in 1857 burst upon the world under the new flag of the L.R.C. They were joined by Kingston in a four in 1859, In (861 Kingston had their first eight. Thames, in like manner, began modestly with a four, which in due time developed winning Grand eights. We have already spoken of the march of watermanship. A quarter of a cen- tury ago the idea of amateurs sitting a keelless cight or four, with- out rolling rowlecks under, until they had first practised for days or weeks in a steady craft, would lave been derided, In these days three or four seratch eights can be manned any day at Putney, capable of sitting a racing ship, and of trying starts with trained University crews, We are not /audatores temports acti as to oars- manship ; sliding seats spoilt form and style at first until they were better understood ; but, in our opinion, there are now (ceteris paribus as to slides versws fixed seats) many more high-class oarsmen than were to be found thirty, or even twenty, years ago. There are more men rowing, and more science, and better coaching than of old. ‘ Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona;’ but we believe that there are on the average some five Agamemnons now afloat for every two in the fiflies and early years of the sixties. Nor do we wonder at it with four or five times as many men on the muster roils of rowing clubs of the present day. As to boat-building, we think that the ‘lines’ of racing eights have fallen off. We can recall no such capacity for travelling between the strokes as in Mat Taylor’s best craft, eg. the Chester boat and the old ‘Eton’ ship; both of which did daty and beat all comers for many years. While look-
