A NARROW ESCAPE of the sward, by ancient villages and unpretending cottage homes, that pleased because they were so unpretending, by droning water-mills and whirling windmills, by picturesquely neglected locks, by shallow fords, and by countless beauty-bits such as artists love, till we reached Godmanchester—a quiet little town, remarkable neither for beauty nor for ugliness, that stands just over the Ouse from Huntingdon. Here we crossed first some low-lying ground, and then the river by a raised causeway and a long stone bridge, darkly gray from age; on the wall in the centre of this bridge is a stone slab inscribed:—
Robertus Cooke
Ex Aquis emersus
Hoc viatoribus sacrum
D.D. 1637.
It appears that, in the year above stated, this Dr. Robert Cooke, whilst crossing the causeway, then in bad repair, was washed off his feet and nearly drowned, the river running strongly past in heavy flood at the time; and in gratitude for his narrow escape he left in his will a certain sum of money, the interest on which was to be expended in keeping the causeway and bridge in perfect repair for ever.
This reminds me of the historic fact that no less a personage than Oliver Cromwell, when a school-*boy, at this spot and under similar circumstances, also nearly lost his life, but was saved from drowning by the timely aid of a Huntingdon clergyman who was likewise crossing at the time. When, in after
