and, perhaps, to hear something about mud
in the mouth of one of them. Such a visit,
in the first week of last August, was made
and in a daily newspaper it stands recorded
thus:—

OFFICIAL VISIT OF THE LORD MAYOR TO
ROCHESTER.—During the progress of the Lord Mayor up
the Medway, the attention of his lordship was particularly
directed to the state of the shore and banks of the
river; which, in several places, are fast being carried
away by the action of the tide, and which at no distant
period of time threatens to form a serious impediment
to the navigation of the river.

In an earlier number of the same newspaper
we find also this piece of intelligence:

ADMIRALTY INSPECTION, CHATHAM DOCKYARD.—
Their lordships inspected a fine new slip which, when
finished, will improve that part of the yard. The new
wharf-wall extends more than two hundred feet farther
into the bed of the river than the old wharf-wall. It is
also intended to make more improvements in the same
direction extending to the mast-house, where the gain
from the river will be at least a hundred yards, now
covered with a deposit of mud. There is near this an
old slip, formerly used for building the twelve-gun
brigs, which is so far inland that it is to be taken down,
&c. &c.

Thus three years ago they were building
Chatham dockyard out, in order to get
into the river; and, the deposit of mud,
rendering this proceeding necessary, was still
going on in August last, as our former citation
shows. Every year makes the matter worse,
and the Lord Mayor as conservator of Thames
and Medway, who

Should not see the sandy hour-glass run,
But he should think of shallows and of flats,

surrounded at home by his own shallows and
fiats of the City Corporation, has other mouths
to think about than the mouth of the Medway.
Besides, can aldermen believe it matter
of complaint, touching a river, that its mouth
is filled?

Now, a river is of use in several ways:—
as a harbour, as a highway, as a receptacle
for fry, and as a drain. We are bound to
confess that the fish have always been matter
of special care to corporate conservancies,
and nobody can accuse the London Corporation
of having overlooked the use of the
Thames as a sewer.

English rivers as they fall towards the sea,
usually expand into tidal estuaries; and, at
some point on each, a town or city has come
into existence, the prosperity of which
depends upon the maintenance of deep water
in the harbour, or at its mouth. The government
of such estuaries has, until recently,
been confided to the corporations of the
respective ports, and the general result of their
administration has been, that the rich and
proud Cinque Ports have become, except
Dover and Hastings, half-inland villages, dull,
grey, and desolate. This ruin and decay is
brought about in several ways;—by the growth
of shingle beaches across their harbour-mouths,
and by the diminution of the estuaries from
natural causes. The towns, having become
poor as the ports grew shoal, were sometimes
also subject to the ravages of French
invasions.

Doubtless, the most important of these
several agencies has been the inning, or
embanking of the tidal levels; and it is a subject
well deserving the attention of the legislature,
and appropriate to a time when the conservancy
of the Thames and Medway is about to
form, as it should have done centuries ago, a
topic of domestic interest. The action of a
river when passing through flat and unembanked
land is to wear away its banks, both
by the action of the tide, and by the lippering
of the waves. As time runs on, a small
stream will, in favourable circumstances,
wear for itself a great tidal basin. Then
follows a period when, by judicious walling,
the banks may be sustained, a tidal channel
governed, and a blessing made secure to large
communities, enjoyable both for the present
and the future.

Much disaster has arisen from the want
of system in the conduct of such works as
these; and another calamity is now present
before us, the consequence of our own
negligence in having allowed embankments to
decay.

The Romans were the originators of the
system of inning in this country; and
wherever any remnant of their work is found
throughout our marsh districts, it evinces the
energy and enterprise which stamped even
their colonial undertakings. Thus, in Romney
Marsh, they flung a wall at one sweep around
twenty-five thousand acres. Some remains of
their walls have been found, it is said, in the
embankments about Greenwich. At Higham,
on the North Kent Railway, is a noble
causeway, over which they were wont to
lead traffic to Colchester; and there can be
little doubt that they walled portions of the
Medway.

After their era, single proprietors, the
churches and monasteries, became the great
workers at this task, and on a very large
scale. The Church of Canterbury and the
Abbey of St. Augustin's working in the region
between Thanet and the mainland; and, on
the river Thames, the monasteries of Barking
and Lesnet, about Erith. Lands so taken in
without method, were found to interfere very
much with one another as to drainage; a
necessity in such low-lying places.
Commissions seem, therefore, to have been
instituted for the double purpose of sustaining
walls, and of caring for the drains or sewers.
Here and there such arrangements exist still,
and fulfil their intention: but, in other
important localities, no such happy event has
ensued, and there has resulted little but
disaster.

The annals of the port of Sandwich leave
one convinced that the decay of that harbour