SION 



centuries ago. Father Thames himself helps the retrospection, for 

 here, on the whole, he has not greatly changed. A great deal 

 muddier, as to complexion, a little greyer and duller as to locks and 

 beard for such we may designate the trees and grasses about his 

 banks all this he has become ; and his quiet backwaters, with the 

 clear brown pools wherein fish loved to lurk, have gone for ever. 

 Mud is more in evidence ; it is no longer hidden by reeds and 

 rushes, nor even by the pollard willows of the Eyots which here and 

 there, as at Chiswick and Kew, cut the stream in two. The wild 

 flowers are sparser, the vegetation less verdant ; but the swans still 

 nest upon its banks. And one must remember that a tidal river, 

 which always running, may be said to have solved the secret of 

 perpetual motion, yet never stops to tell it to us is, even in respect 

 of this everlasting movement, in one sense, always the same. 

 Father Thames has grown older, but his character has not changed, 

 and he is as subject to moods now as in the far-off days when the 

 young Lord Guildford Dudley and his child-wife, a pair of happy 

 lovers then, with no foreboding of the fate before them, spent their 

 honeymoon weeks at Sion which was at that period in the pos- 

 session of Lord Guildford's father, who was John Dudley, Earl of 

 Warwick, and for a short time, Duke of Northumberland. 



And because in the reach of the river that stretches from Isle- 

 worth to Twickenham, there is, nowadays, comparatively little 

 traffic, one is seldom rudely awakened from retrospective musings ; 

 from the vision of the time when, though the shipping of the 

 Thames was insignificant compared with what it is at present, 

 the river was London's great highway, alike for pleasure and for 

 business ; when the King's state barge, and my Lord Protector's, 

 and my Lord of Northumberland's, with many oars, plied constantly 

 between Whitehall Stairs and Sion and the stream was alive with 

 small craft, insignificant in tonnage, but picturesque beyond 

 compare. 



For reliable information regarding Sion, I have been very much 

 indebted to two clear and able articles by the late Colonel Eustace 

 Balfour, which appeared some years ago in the Magazine of Art, 

 and which are invaluable aids to an appreciation of the ancient 

 family seat of the Northumberland family. The author's wide 

 architectural experience and taste, and his own close connection 

 with the House of Percy, rendered him peculiarly well-qualified to 



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