J827.J [ 377 ] 



THE LORD MAYOR'S JOURNEY TO OXFORD.* 



" Begin, diverting 1 muse, a comic strain, 

 Of MY LORD MAYOR conducted o'er the main I 



" ALTHOUGH the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London, as Con-' 

 servator of the river Thames, has extended, time immemorial, from Yant- 

 let, about fifty miles below London Bridge, on the east, to the London 

 Mark stone, about thirty-six miles on the west : it has yet but rarely 

 happened that the Court of Aldermen have thought proper, by any for- 

 mality of proceeding, publicly to renew their claim to this jurisdiction 

 over those districts of the river lying west of Richmond." 



There are some instances in which a writer tells his own story so well, 

 that it would be downright malice to attempt to open it for him. The 

 above paragraph stands at the commencement of the Reverend Mr. Dil- 

 lon's book ; and we cannot do better than commence our notice with it. 



The work before us, then, which supplies a narrative punctual even 

 to the minutest details of the " moving accidents, by flood and field," 

 which befell the last Lord Mayor, Mr. Venables, and a select body of the 

 Court of Aldermen, on an excursion which they made from Cornhill to 

 Oxford, in the course of the last summer, was written, it appears, ex- 

 pressly, by " the desire of the said Lord Mayor," now, unhappily, 

 sic transeant glorife ! so fugacious are civil honours ! a " LORD" 

 no longer ! and is dedicated, in a page flowered all over with large and 

 small capitals so disposed as to form a perfect chart, or vade mecum, 

 upon every future point of civic precedency to the right honourable 

 late chief magistrate in person, and the respectable individuals, generally, 

 who composed his party. The author, Mr. Dillon, as " Chaplain to 

 the Mayoralty," naturally, and most properly, felt any " wishes" to 

 be "commands!" from the "distinguished personage," to whom "he 

 owed the honour of his appointment;" and, after trusting, in a very 

 brief but modest preface, that there is nothing in the task undertaken 

 " altogether out of accordance" with the sacred profession of which he 

 is " the unworthiest member," the reverend narrator proceeds at once 

 in the paragraph above quoted to " incision." 



It seems that, " in the course of every Mayoralty," as far back as the 

 memory of the City Remembrancer extends, " Courts of Conservancy of 

 the river Thames," have been used to be held by the " chief magistrates,", 

 at " Stratford and Greenwich, for the counties of Essex and Kent/' 

 and " at Richmond for those of Surrey and Middlesex;" and that the- 

 days on which these courts were held have been used to be considered 

 " as some of the pleasantest, as well as the most useful in the course of 

 the civic year." But, notwithstanding this fact, and owing probably to, 

 that peculiar disposition, which persons in high office (as it is agreed on 

 all hands) have to neglect the duties for which their office was constitu- 

 ted it appears that the " jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor over the river 

 Thames, as far as the town of Staines, in the county of Middlesex," had. 

 only once been asserted, since the Mayoralty of Sir Watkin Lewis in the 

 year 1781 " to wit, in the reign of * Sir Claudius Stephen Hunter, 

 Baronet,' in the year 1812 !" up to the present time. 



In such an improved state, however, as we have reached lately as to 

 all facilities connected with locomotion, this was not a .state of things 



* " The Lord Mayor's visit to Oxford, in the month of July ] 826. Written at the desire 

 of (he party, by the Chaplain to the Mayoralty." Longman and Co. 



M,M. New Series VOL. III. INo. 16. 3 C 



