IT a^ROGKE RS ^> Librarians. F. W. YENNING J THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID BY STREAM AND SEA. BY STREAM AND SEA A BOOK FOR WANDERERS AND ANGLERS. BY WILLIAM SENIOR ("RED SPINNER"). CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 1877. (Ail rights reserved?) "There is-a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is Society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar. I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal .From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal." CHILDE HAROLD. Efl MY WELL-REMEMBERED FRIENDS OF THE WHITEFRIARS CLUB, IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY HOURS. CONTENTS. PART I. CHAPTSR PACK I. A HERTFORDSHIRE VALLEY ... ... ... 3 II. MODERN YARMOUTH ... ... ... 20 III. A SPRING RAMBLE BY THE ITCHEN ... ... 35 IV. CHARLES KINGSLEY IN THE SADDLE .. 49 V. OVER THE MENDIPS ... ... 59 VI. OUT OF THE CHALK ... ... 68 VII. WALTON'S RIVER ... ... . . ... 92 VIII. A MOORLAND LEGEND ... ... 107 IX. IN THE PEAK COUNTRY ... ... ... ... 126 X. NOTES AT BRIGHTON ... ... 139 XL WINTER AT HAZELBARN ... ... ... ... 153 XII. MEMORIES OF THE NEVA ... ... ... 165 XIII. AUTUMNAL ROVINGS ... ... ... 185 XIV. CHRISTMAS EVE IN A PUNT ... ... ... 214 viii Contents. PART II. MY OCEAN LOG. PAGE FIRST ENTRY — FROM NEWCASTLE TO PORT SAID ... 233 SECOND ENTRY — THE SUEZ CANAL AND RED SEA ... 246 THIRD ENTRY — FLYING FISH AND THEIR ENEMIES ... 263 FOURTH ENTRY — THE STRAITS OF MALACCA ... ... 276 FIFTH ENTRY — AT SINGAPORE ... ... ... 286 SIXTH ENTRY — STRANGE FISH ... ... ... .,, 298 SEVENTH ENTRY — THE GREAT BARRIER REEF ... 304 BY STREAM AND SEA. PART I. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON ANGLING AND RAMBLING. BY STREAM AND SEA. CHAPTER I. A HERTFORDSHIRE VALLEY. MONO the many tributaries which feed old Father Thames during his proud career through a drainage basin estimated, I believe, at over six thousand miles, commend me, in the double capacity of wanderer and angler, to the Colne. It is within easy reach of town, it is very fairly stored with fish, and it traverses interesting and, in some portions of its course, exquisitely beautiful scenery. How many Colnes there may happen to be in this country I know not ; my Colne is not, however, the feeder of the Calder which receives the foul discolouration of the West Riding cloth factories, nor the stream of that name which runs through the north-eastern part of Essex to Colchester, nor the little Coin (so often spelt with a final e) that rises in the Cotswold Hills, and gives some occasionally worthy trout fishing at Fairford. My Colne is that lovable stream which brightens a goodly section of pastoral Hertfordshire, 4 By Stream and Sea. which for two miles and a half keeps boundary between Herts and Middlesex, and which in the last fourteen miles of its length mostly marks the border-line between Bucks and Middlesex, as the Lea across the county marks the border-line on the eastern side. Rising near historical Hatfield, the Colne soon begins to receive additions right and left, its infancy being by this reason much shorter in duration than that of most streams ; very quickly " The struggling rill insensibly is grown Into a brook of loud and stately march, Cross'd ever and anon by plank and arch ; And for like use, lo ! what might seem a zone Chosen for ornament ; stone match'd with stone In studied symmetry, with interspace For the clear waters to pursue their race Without restraint." One of the earlier branches of the Colne, the Verlam, is considerably larger than itself, and this is the stream which passes by Lord Bacon's Gorhambury and the ancient shrine of St. Alban's. By Watford the Colne flows through flat marshy meadows, overlooked by the London and North- Western Railway, and busily peopled in winter-time by grey plovers and many passing feathered visitants, and touches the quiet old-fashioned town of Rickmansworth, where we may find it convenient to halt at the head-quarters of our Hertfordshire Valley. From this centre you may wander away into the woods to the north, into Moor Park, once the habitation of Car- dinal Wolsey, James Duke of Monmouth, and Lord Anson, and now the country house of Lord Ebury ; or into Rick- mansworth Park, where you may pass a long delightful summer's day under the shade of grand avenues of trees, A Hertfordshire Valley. 5 none daring or caring to make you afraid. Or to vary your experience you may take the canal towing-path, and trudge over its loose gravel until you heave a sigh of thankfulness in Uxbridge, of which it was once said that the only thing to be noticed respecting it was the house in which the Commissioners appointed to arrange the little differences between Charles Stuart and his bristle-backed Parliament sat fourteen days in conference, and never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion after all. The first sight of Rickmansworth from the window of your railway carriage is a very pleasant one, the taper spire of the parish church rising out of the trees as one always likes to see it rise in country places, where ecclesiastical rooks and episcopal jackdaws like to claim a share in the benefits which Church and State bestow upon the land. There is a rare colony of these garrulous belfry haunters at Rickmansworth, and sometimes the approach of the train, though it is the slowest railway travelling in the kingdom, sends them wheeling over spire and trees in noisy clouds. Very peaceable and — if I might say it without offence of a town in which I have spent many happy hours — very humdrum is Rickmansworth. Of course, like other old- fashioned places with a history, it has had its excitements. Take, as a specimen, the matter set forth on a timeworn black-letter document in the British Museum, bearing date 1525 and beginning: "Be it knoun to all cryste people which joyeth in theyr hartes of ye power of God shewed by his own precyous body i fourme of brede in ye chyrche of Rykmersworthe where wretched and cursed people cruelly and wylfully set fyre upon all ye ymages." This was the head and front of the offending, and the cardinal of the period liberally offered indulgences to whomsoever would aid in restoring the cremated effigies. Rickmansworth 6 By Stream and Sea. Church in these days of grace is, however, most carefully tended ; its churchyard is a finely shaded God's-acre, and over the walls of the building luxuriant ivy is climbing upwards and onwards. Rickmansworth possesses good inn accommodation of the comfortable, old-fashioned kind ; but there is an unpretend- ing little tavern down by the bridge specially dear to a fraternity of anglers who make it their head-quarters. Their room overlooks a back stream running swiftly from a weir at the bottom of the cabbage garden, and day and night, winter and summer, feast days and fast days, they are soothed by the musical plash of the water rippling along under the balcony which compasses the entire front of this homely Fisherman's Home. Fishing-gear fills the comers, mantelpiece, and sideboard. Upon the wall of the Wal- tonian sanctum there hangs a floridly coloured representa- tion of the catching of a salmon. The angler is seen struggling with a rod that by all rules of perspective should be four hundred and fifty feet long ; and he is of the type of sportsmen so dear to a certain class of artists — a swarthy gentleman of the gipsy type, cigar in mouth, and hair most ravishingly curled. But somehow the picture tells its story admirably : it gives you an accurate idea of a fine salmon river, and the country through which it runs and the sort of tableau that an angler winching in an exhausted salmon, an attendant with gaff outstretched, and an odd slain fish or so neatly deposited among flowers and grass under a rock, would make. Some such pictorial furniture as this is as necessary to an angler's inn as the Herring prints are to the coaching and marketing tavern. We have not, alas ! many honest angling inns left to us — I mean the inn as to which it was no mere figure of speech to talk of snow-white sheets smelling A Hertfordshire Valley. 7 of lavender, and the like — some such inn as Shenstone, no doubt, had in his mind when he wrote the dreadful heresy — " Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn." From the doorway of this anglers' tavern at Rickmans- worth you look out upon the canal. The straight stretch of sluggish water at eventide reflects the sunset, and catches the parting glints of daylight. A canal is not per se an object of beauty, but a bridge or two, fringes of sedge and bulrush, cattle reflected in the water, and trees overhanging here and there, take much from the hard and fast lines of the artificial channel. It is not an effort of imagination, there- fore, to represent this prosaic canal as a salient feature of the winsome picture spread before us from our standpoint, and the general effect is heightened by the broadening of the water at the jutting point where the Colne runs into and across it, under the high Chinese-looking bridge up which the barge horses have to climb. In the meadows to the right of this bridge there are notice-boards warning delin- quents with angling propensities against the penalties of the law, and offering rewards to any member of the community who will detect and expose the poacher. A small rustic bridge further on, under overshadowing trees, conducts to the waterside, margined for a while with an osier bed. Beyond the further bank the distant houses of the town peep from beneath the greenwood, and the road may be traced by its fringe of trees. Shorthorns feed in the verdant meads ; bees hum in the air ; swallows hawk over the fields and pursue their prey to the surface of the water, from which they can whisk it without a splash. 8 By Stream and Sea. It is a common expression that you can look upon a scene like this without tiring ; but not more common than true. The poor women, married and single, who toil in the rag- mill up the road, the labourers returning with the expiring day from fallow and fen, the country folk, driving back- wards and forwards, generally slacken speed or stop on the crest of the bridge that they may once more take in the panorama with which they have been for many years familiar; and every night the angler, as he steps out to smoke his pipe of peace, will be sure to find groups of natives looking over the coping into the water below, looking at nothing particular, but hugely comforted neverthe- less by the occupation. The barge life of this Hertfordshire valley cannot long escape the notice of the frequent visitor. It is a phase of life not at all creditable to a Christian land and a missionary-loving people. The bargees are sottishly ignor- ant, and treat their womenfolk as if they were savages. Being continually on the water, and continually on the move, in our midst but ever passing, on shore yet on water, no one seems to think of them. They belong to no parish, and have no responsibilities; neither does any teacher or guide feel responsibility towards them. True it is that there are exceptions to the rule; some of the barges are well-regulated cottages, whose little aft cabin is clean, painted with some idea of artistic adornment, and the abode of a family literally born and bred1 within its shadowy recesses. But these are rare exceptions indeed. To the anglers' inn there is a lower region where the barge men and barge women call for refreshments when passing through the lock hard by, and he who would prefer not to see the face of womankind disfigured by every kind of bruise, or to hear horrible blasphemies rolling from a A Hertfordshire Valley. 9 woman's tongue, had better give that lower region a very wide berth. Ask the landlord of the inn how many drunken persons he has rescued from a watery grave close to his stable door j ask the coroner what a tale of dead is yielded every year by the canal. And if you would learn further of the morality, and ignorance, and habits of the barge people, start straightway to the Paddington basin and make full in- quiries. The condition of these hardworking men, women, and children, for whom we should feel much pity, has been improved, no doubt; but they are still deplorably benighted. Whatever man may be, every prospect pleases. Follow the Colne through the meadows, fight your way through the myriads of gnats and midges that rise from the osier leaves : mark the merry water-rat plunge from his niche in the muddy bank, the water-wagtail rise from the island of weeds in the middle of the stream, the reed-sparrow scared away in momentary alarm, the dabchicks down the water which will have disappeared long before you reach them, the deep swims where the lazy roach keep company, the gravelly scours and sandy shallows upon which the dace and chub wait for the drifting insect, the bubbling weirs streaked with effervescing water and flecked with spotless foam, the ford leading to the village, the anglers' huts, the villagers' kitchen gardens, the creeper-covered houses, the clean shaven lawns of the gentry and the humble tenements of the poor, the village on one side and on the other copses and rising woods in which game find cover and romping children gather flowers, blackberries, nuts, hips and haws, in their respective seasons — mark these as the surroundings of the Colne as it winds through rich meadow-land to the Roaring Ford, a little beyond which it once more finds an outlet into the canal. to By Stream and Sea. The remainder of the Colne valley may be not less pic- turesque than that we have left behind, and to which we must presently return, and it possesses historic interest The mansion of Harefield — we are now in Middlesex with Buckinghamshire across the river — was visited by Queen Elizabeth, who halted there as the guest of Lord Keeper Egerton, and the new play of " Othello" was performed there by Shakespeare's own company, with Shakespeare himself, in all probability, in the cast. This was in 1602, and thirty years later the Countess Dowager of Derby had for her guest a man who was in other ways associated with the locality — the poet Milton. For her he wrote his "Arcades," which was represented at Harefield by some noble persons of her own family. Milton was a frequent visitor at Harefield while he lived at Horton, and lower down there still, I believe, is to be seen the cottage (at Chalfont St. Giles) hired for the blind poet by Quaker Ellwood when the inhabitants of London were driven afield by the Plague. It is pretty well authenticated that the greater portion, if not the whole, of "Paradise Regained" was written in this retreat. Before this time, however, the famous mansion at Harefield had fallen victim to its own hospitality, for the gay Sir Charles Sedley being one of the guests, and reading in bed, set fire to his bed- furniture, and thus burnt the house down. Historical, too, to anglers is the Colne through the use made of it by Sir Humphrey Davy in " Salmonia." The worthy inventor of what is still the Safety Lamp has been often laughed at by scientific naturalists, but for all that we ought to be thankful for the illness which, rendering him, to use his own words, " wholly incapable of attending to more useful studies, or of following more serious pursuits," gave us his charming little work as the amusement of his leisure A Hertfordshire Valley. 1 1 hours. It was upon the Colne at Denham, midway between Rickmansworth and Uxbridge, that his four dramatis per- sona gave up twenty-four hours to the delight of an angler's May-day. In its essential points the description written in 1810 serves now : — " This is really a very charming villa scene, I might almost say a pastoral scene. The meadows have the verdure which even the Londoners enjoy as a peculiar feature of the English landscape. The river is clear and has all the beauties of a trout stream of the larger size — there rapid and here still, and there tumbling in foam and fury over abrupt dams upon clean gravel, as if pursuing a natural course — and that island with its poplars and willows, and the flies making it their summer paradise, and its little fishing-house are all in character; and if not extremely picturesque it is at least a very pleasant scene, from its verdure and pure waters, for the lovers of an innocent amusement." The record of the actual sport obtained by this quartette is very tantalizing to readers in these later times. Coming upon the fish when they had forsaken cad and minnow for the dainty drake or luscious alder fly, they killed and slew. Fish under two pounds were returned to the water, and monsters up to seven pounds were either lost or bagged. Alas, for the days that are gone ! Occasional large fish are even now killed by minnow, and more rarely by fly, but the Colne trout, though not extinct, is only represented by patriarchal specimens, which have probably wandered from tributaries to take up positions which they hold until poached or taken by legitimate captors. During the pike season a large trout, or perhaps a couple, may be taken with live bait, or a brace in the early spring may fall to the share of a skilful minnow fisher ; but the glory of the Colne as a trout stream has long since departed, 12 By Stream and Sea. Not so many years ago the Rickmansworth fishery was one of the best in the country. It was carefully preserved by a limited club of gentlemen, who paid a high price for their sport ; but the sport was worth the paying for, and the angler was seldom indeed sent empty away. One morning the keeper walked down the meadows to perform his daily inspection, and saw a burly speckled object circling slowly by the side of the stream. It was a trout, too sickly to dart away at the approach of footsteps. A few yards further there was another fish in extremis ; then another, and others. In short, along the entire margin the magnificent trout, objects of his most constant watchfulness, were dead and dying by the hundred, and by the hundred- weight. The man has often told me that he wept like a child at the sight. His employer went to law with the mill- owner above Rickmansworth, whose iniquities had caused this dire destruction, and through some technicality lost the cause. This portion of the river is still preserved as a sub- scription water, and I know of none that surpasses it for heavy and plentiful roach, for large dace that afford good sport to the fly-fisher, and for chub. The pike run small, though they are of extra quality. The poachers in the neighbourhood run large, and they also are of extra quality — bad quality. No better excursion can be made to behold our Hertford- shire valley scenery at its best, and at the same time to visit one of the show-places of the neighbourhood, than to Cheneys, just over the Buckinghamshire border, five miles from Rickmansworth. The drive is through delightful country, along a high road overlooking the course of the River Chess, which joins the Colne near Rickmansworth. You ascend from that town by a steep street, which soon brings you into high ground, among the hedges and trees A Hertfordshire Valley. 13 and fresh country air. Rickmansworth Park is to the right, with its cool shady avenues and grand forest trees, and there is rolling upland to the left, stretching away in well- cultivated undulations towards Royal Windsor. A July drive along this route lives bright in my memory. It had rained hard during the morning, and the sun had, as if in a fit of sulkiness, refused to show himself for the re- mainder of the day, though the showers had ceased. Nature was therefore in tears, but tears which disfigure human beings become the hedgerows and grassy banks, cornfields and tree-branches. In the glittering drops which gently hung upon the leaves there was no trace of grief or sadness, but rather a suggestion of joy and infinite content. How, too, the birds warbled on every hand, piping in all the bushes, answering each other in the tree-tops and making the woods jubilant with song ! And what woods they were ! I saw them on the return journey next day, mottled with the gold of a fierce sunshine, but now they were clothed in sober mood that accorded well with their stateliness. Towards Lowdwater the trees are very fine, and their naturally noble aspect is heightened by an abundant ad- mixture of larch, Scotch and other firs. Shapely beeches (not that the beech is ever other than shapely), lofty elms, sturdy oaks, showy chestnuts, lift up their heads, rising with the ground from the little river and covering the opposite slope with a mass of variegated foliage. Sometimes you forget the woods in the nearer objects — in the flowering vetch, in the waving corn, bright with scarlet poppy-heads, the blue blossoms of the succory (so often mistaken for the corn-flower proper), and the modest little lesser bindweed, that, entwined and nestled among the stalks, makes bold in the absence of sun-glare to open its sweet countenance. To many a cornfield is a cornfield, 14 By Stream and Sea. but, like the poet's primrose, "it is nothing more; " to the careful observer who has time to lean over a five-barred gate and look into the wheat a cornfield is a glorious garden of wild flowers. On this July day the wild flowers shone in their full glory. What the fields lacked the hedges supplied. They were drawn up on either side of the road like troops at a review, as if for the sole purpose of gratifying me, who drove slowly between the lines, inspecting their many-coloured uniforms and accoutrements. It is said that there are no fewer than twenty varieties of wild rose in these islands, and there were a good many representatives in this Hertfordshire hedge, in different stages of bloom and in every shade of delicate colouring, from the blush that is almost white to the blush that is almost red. There, too, exquisitely beautiful as it always is, was the bonny woodbine, climbing always from left to right, and the white convolvulus obeying the same law. The cream-coloured and odorous elder blossoms were there in large masses, and the common bramble with its red stems and manifold flower-spangles held its own right bravely. " Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow O'er all the fragrant bowers, Thou need'st not be ashamed to show Thy satin-threaded flowers." But we must drive onwards would we not lose caste in the eyes of the driver, who does not understand why his horse should be held in when the road is good and the steed willing. Luckily, he is one of those drivers who, while not chatting too much, is desirous of telling his customers many interesting things about the country — how, for example, the splendid mansion behind the cedars yonder was built by So-and-so, the great tobacconist, who owns the A Hertfordshire Valley. 15 entire estate and has worked wonders upon it — how Mrs. Blank, in the cottage, has gathered so many bushels of cherries already, and will be able to gather as many more — how, coming down the hill which we are approaching, Farmer Stubbs, keeping a loose rein, came to grief and broke his neck — how this fine stretch of furze-covered land is Chorleywood Common, famous for splendid cricket- matches promoted by one of the moving spirits at Lord's, who lives in the house — how, at the further extremity of the common, there are the kennels of the old Berkeley Hunt — how much had been given for the fleeces of the sheep, which in their newly shorn condition seemed any- thing but comfortable after the rain. There ran a stoat across the lane into the plantation, and here pounced a hawk upon something fluttering over the richly blossoming pea-field : now we pass a group of rustic boys examining the rusty gun of a companion who is neglecting his bird-keeping, or a row of old almshouses suggestive of Elizabethan times, or a number of model cottages with choice flower and vegetable gardens at sight of which the driver launches out into loud praise of the Duke of Bedford, upon whose estate we are, and who, he says, lets the handsome brick houses for eighteenpence a week. "By George ! sir," he says, touching up the mare with the whip, " I should like to live there myself." And he might do worse. Down in the valley, in a kind of sleepy hollow, sur- rounded by charming scenery, but very much out of the world, are Sarratt Mills, on the Chess. Descending the steep lane by which the mills are reached, you have a comprehensive bird's-eye view of the valley, the woods, and, the stream. There are trout in the Chess, and, to let 1 6 By Stream and Sea. you into a secret, the article strapped to the umbrella is a fly-rod, and I have received an invitation to see the paper- mill and make acquaintance with paper-mill trout. I have spoiled so much paper in my time that I resolve to inspect the mill as a matter of duty to conscience ; I need neither argument nor resolve with the trout, being always ready for them. From the excitement which the arrival of a stranger causes among the workpeople, I am led to the conclusion that life at Sarratt Mills is regular, not to say monotonous ; it must of necessity be so to the ladies whom I espy over the garden hedge, in broad-brimmed hats and white gauntlets, busy at the flower beds, and for whom there is absolutely no society near at hand. A mill-head for angling purposes is a very different affair from a mill-tail. The former is quiet sometimes to stag- nation ; the latter characterized by perpetual motion. The Chess in the one fishable meadow at Sarratt takes the fonii of a mill-head, and it was like my inveterate ill-fortune that I should find it smooth and quiet as a pond. A trout would be nothing less than idiotic to take an artificial fly under those circumstances. But was there ever an angler yet who would be deterred from at any rate making an attempt, whatever \ the chances might be? The foreman of the mill, into whose hands the hospitable proprietor delivered me, thought it the worst of taste on my part that I did not at once accompany him into the mill. He was a practical Yorkshireman, and could not imagine why I was not as enthusiastic about his business as was he himself. After the honeysuckles, wild roses, woods, cornfields, and hedgerows, I am bound to say the paper-mill did not strike me as being particularly attractive. The first process I found was quite appropriately termed "dusting;" two very dirty young women were tending a revolving circular A Hertfordshire Valley. 17 wire cage in an atmosphere of dreadful dust which might represent the sweeping of all the London garrets. In another room grimy girls were cutting up barge canvas, potato sacks, tarpaulins, ropes, and other materials of the marine store class. In another the " hands " were sorting the rags — soft pink rags for blotting-paper, and white rags for white paper, blue and other colours being artificially produced. Upstairs dressmakers' clippings and black odds and ends of various materials were, after being boiled and rinsed with lime-water, prepared for the soft whity-brown paper in which madame's drapery purchases are wrapped. Out of the stinking mass seething in the boiler would by- and-by come the wholesome paper bags in which your confectioner sends you your cracknels. Then came the breaker-room, where, by an ingenious drum-washing ap- paratus, rags were broken and cleansed. Next it was shown how the rags were reduced to pulp, or as it is technically termed, "half-stuff." By this time the choking dust and uncomfortable rags had been left in the rear, the atmosphere was sweeter, and the workpeople were much more wholesome in appearance. The vats were full of yeasty-looking pulp, which, having passed through a strainer, bore a resemblance to clean curds. The pulp requires much refining before it leaves the vats, and the material at each stage assumed a fairer quality, until it descended to the machine-rooms, where what seemed to be a number of printing presses were at work. Here the pulp flowed in a smooth stream along a shoot, ran over several miniature weirs, refining as it travelled, until it spread out and became an almost impalpable sheet over a tightly strained wire bed. Dryer and dryer it became, and at the last weir the sheet went between two massive rollers of felt, c 1 8 By Stream and Sea. to all intents finished paper, though rollers and cylinders remained for drying and calendering. The paper-mill trout, it was evident even to the foreman, could be kept waiting no longer. It was but a short length of water at one's disposal, for the Chess is most rigorously preserved, and the boundary fence of the Sarratt Mill land was not more than two hundred yards off. The fish refused to respond to any manner of temptation. Long line, short line ; wet fly, dry fly ; fine cast, coarse cast ; flies dark and light, large and small, shared the same uniform fate. In such case there is nothing lost by suspending operations and making a few quiet observations. In other words, spike your rod, lie down on the grass (if it be not too damp), and watch. So I advised myself, and so I did. When everything was quiet the fish began to move about, evidently returning from the deeps into which they had been scared to the banks under which they had been originally lying. They arrived singly, and with no little commotion took up each its favourite position. Giving them leisure to settle down into confidence, I made ready, and having previously marked the particular bunch of grass near which the fish lay, dropped the fly upon it, whence it tumbled gently into the edge of the water. A suck from the trout, a delicate but firm jerk from the fisherman, and the mischief was accomplished. The fish leaped clean out of the water, and frightened numbers of which I had had no previous suspicion away from the margin. But he was well hooked, and all his plucky fighting could not save him. In about an hour quietness again reigned supreme, and a second trout was deluded into the fancy that my hare's ear was a dainty morsel accidentally falling in his way. It was a modest bit of sport, but it fitted well into a long day A Hertfordshire Valley. 19 which had included a succession of enjoyments as miscel- laneous as the subjects of this chapter. And Cheneys still remained. The Sleepy Hollow of Sarratt was left to its seclusion, and the high-road once more gained. Cheneys, about a mile and a half farther on, is a placid, eminently respectable village, commanding the loveliest woodland walks. Attached to the church is the mausoleum, where lie many members of the Russell family, among them Lord William, who was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields. No one goes to Cheneys without seeing the remarkable monuments and faded banners of the mau- soleum ; the fine old Elizabethan Manor House, with its cool quadrangle and dark-leaved ivy ; and the veteran oak, planted, it is said, by the fair hand of good Queen Bess herself. Pursuing the valley upwards Latimers and Chesham are reached, the Chess rising near the latter place. The lower part of the river has been spoiled by mill-poisoning, but between Sarratt and its source it maintains its high reputation as a trout stream. CHAPTER II. MODERN YARMOUTH. jOR one I do not hesitate to admit undying affection for the really ancient town of Great Yarmouth. It is not because St. Nicholas, the friend of the mariner, is its patron saint, and the building bearing his name the finest parish church in England. It is a matter of very little moment to me whether, in the year of our Lord 495, Cerdicus, the warlike Saxon, and Henricus his son, did or did not come unto those yellow sands. It may be recorded, but one need not be particularly moved by the fact, that for eight hundred years herrings and Yarmouth have been, at home, if not abroad, synonymous terms. We may, on the whole, take it as a matter of actual occurrence that the Dutch and Fleming refugees, persecuted out of their own countries, settled here. Very little am I moved by, though not denying, the historical associations of the place, includ- ing as they do a Cromwell, a Nelson, or even a Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who once sat for the borough. These, though matters of passing interest, are not pro- Vocative of affection. I love Yarmouth because, over and Modern Yarmouth. 21 above other towns within my knowledge, it moves most slowly with the galloping times, and because, if you take it at the proper time — and that is not in what the common world would call its " season " — it still retains that ancient and fish-like smell which so admirably becomes it. Those " rows," to the number of one hundred and fifty, which Dickens in his own happy manner likened to the bars of a gridiron, were surely made expressly for the reception of kippers, the development of red soldiers, and the due honouring of a superfine bloater, made to hold in lingering embrace the perfume of cured and curing fish, and thereby to cut off from the inhabitants the remotest chance of pre- tending that they do not owe their fame to, and keep up their existence by, the delicious and plentiful little clupea harengus. Once upon a time* I took the reader to sea with the herring fleet, and brought him, after one night's absence from his feather bed, safely ashore, with a profitable cargo of silver-sided fish. On this occasion we may confine ourselves entirely to Yarmouth, albeit these November days are dark and drear and short. All the summer visitors, the seaside holiday-makers, have deserted the lodging-houses. The beach, so lively and crowded during the dog-days, is mostly left to local children and native dogs. Yarmouth, in short, is itself again, and wholly given up to the harvest which the bounteous ocean invites it to come and win in the teeth of howling gales and foaming seas. Nobody, I presume, who is not a gross partisan, would venture to say that Yarmouth is the kind of town a photographer in search of the beauti- ful would make the subject of views for an art-album or patent stereoscope. * "Waterside Sketches," pp. 188-206. 22 By Stream and Sea. Mistress Peggotty, who for her part was proud to call herself a Yarmouth bloater, told little Copperfield that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe. Copperfield had not till then held that opinion, you may remember. Quoth he — " It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river ; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography-book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles, which would account for it. As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it ; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and if the town and the tide had not been quite so mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer." Approaching the town from inland, from the far-reaching flats over which the North Sea is once supposed to have freely ebbed and flowed, you must agree with the faithfulness of Master Copperfield's portraiture ; but, seen from the water, Yarmouth has a certain quaint picturesqueness of its own, very pleasing to the eye that rests upon it when the windmills on the low sandhills are revolving, when the autumn sun smites the housetops with his ruddy hand, when the pierheads are crowded with amateur codling-catchers and spectators, who gather there at the rate of twelve human beings for every fish hauled up, and when the heavy black boats on the beach are busily performing their duties as mediums between the fishing-vessels and the carts waiting to bear away their produce. It is worth incurring the dis- appointment of an unsuccessful two hours' fishing in an Modern Yarmouth. 23 open boat thus to see Yarmouth at its best, as you will see it rocking a furlong or so from shore, while your long line of a dozen or twenty hooks reposes on the bottom, in wait for cod, whiting, eel, or gurnard. Better, however, will it be for the student of modern Yarmouth to stroll, with observant eye and ear, into the quarters where the staple industry of the place is in full operation. Begin at the bridge and walk by the river side towards the fish-wharf. The double avenue of trees and the gay flowers which the inhabitants of the upper part love to cultivate, and, loving, cultivate successfully, give a colour of home to the neighbourhood. It reminds you of some scene in Holland, as many other things in Yarmouth will do before you have finished your perambulations. The har- bour is crowded with small vessels, luggers, smacks, and dandies, that will before to-morrow be off for the fishing- ground. In the shop and tavern windows the advertise- ments, in keeping with the surroundings, invite you to become the purchaser of some strongly built craft, with all her superior stores and materials, including ever so many tons of the best pig-iron ballast, the communication invariably ending with an inventory in which a boat-hook, worth ninepence, perhaps, has a line of small capitals all to itself. The ship-chandler's shops are in great request now; the little wooden midshipmen at their doors have been newly varnished and gilt ; the shop-boys run hither and thither with blocks, chains, cordage, and sails. Boys who are not engaged in these pursuits, pass with spoils of fish suspended by a piece of twine ; even the policemen and railway porters coming from the wharf have their fishy morsels dangling from their hands. There is a tramway, but not for passengers ; only for cargoes of fish. Herrings are the first considera- tion here. For them also have been built those handy little 24 By Stream and Sea. two-wheeled carts, drawn by plump, fast-trotting cobs not to be beaten in any other English town, and from which may be any day selected half a dozen greys and iron-greys fit for presentation to an Arab chieftain. Here at last is the fish-wharf, a fine straight quay with a substantially built market facing the newly arrived vessels — of say fifteen tons average. The tug has just brought in three of these fishing-boats ; having been relieved of their cargoes these crafts will, without the delay of an hour, go out of the river, make full sail to the offing, and cast out their drift-nets before nightfall. The skipper and crew care nothing about the fish after they have been deposited on the wharf, and they have nothing to do with their sale. The wholesale fish-market, to the very doors of which the vessels are brought, was built to remove many of the inconveniences formerly experienced under the old system of landing the herrings on the beach — a system, be it remembered, which, owing to the monopoly it fostered on land, much better pleased the local fishermen than the newer free trade regula- tions under which the Scotch and French fishermen are able to compete so vigorously with them. The beachmen, finding to a great extent their occupation gone, naturally complain of the change, and it is no consolation to them to know that it is for the public good. Before the fishing-vessel has fairly brought up alongside the market wharf she is boarded by a number of men who are not, as their eager gestures and impetuous language would signify, about to murder the crew and scuttle the ship ; they are " tellers " on the look-out for an engage- ment, and the large panniers they carry are not Welsh coracles, but " swills " into which the fish in the hold will be counted — each swill, for the accuracy of sale, to con- tain five hundred fish. The wharf is covered with swills, Modern Yarmouth. 25 and a bell is being rung to call the buyers together. The auctioneer sometimes, as when the fishermen have been too successful, may have a difficulty in obtaining an auditory ; but that is a rare case. He is a man of few words, and those few he wastes not. The late George Robbins would have mourned over his matter-of-fact descriptions. " What d'ye say," he asks ; " shall we begin with five pounds a last ?" A last means thirteen thousand two hundred fish, and by the rules of the trade herring are sold by the last. But there is no response until a comfortable-looking gentleman offers fifty shillings. Him the auctioneer evi- dently knows, for he familiarly and chidingly remonstrates with him for his meanness. At this juncture there is an uproar in the rear, a fight between a sailor and a teller in the shed, and the auctioneer is left absolutely alone until the dispute is settled by the ignominious thrashing and retreat of the landlubber. Even- tually the bidding begins at three pounds, and proceeds at advances of five shillings, until, amidst some laughter, the comfortable-looking buyer who had offered fifty shillings buys the last for five guineas. Prices vary according to the supply of fish, and vary therefore immensely. Not long ago forty-five shillings per last was the highest price that could be fetched ; at another time herrings had been so scarce that the auctioneer dared not sell more than a hundred fish at a time, and then at eight shillings per hundred, or forty pounds a last. The briskest sale-time is when the earliest vessels come into the river : at such crises everybody works double tides to catch the trains and get the fresh fish into the markets while they are saleable. The auctioneer, it may be added, is a man of some consequence. He provides the swills, and is responsible for the money produced by sales ; in return he gets a good commission, and they do say about 26 By Stream and Sea. Yarmouth that the auctioneers make as much out of the herrings as any. Lying on the wet floor of the market-house are groups of cod, taken by accident in the drift-nets, or by the single hook-lines thrown casually by the sailors overboard for the chance of a stray fish. These cod are arranged in lots of from eight to five, the fish averaging perhaps six pounds each, and they, too, are submitted by auction. Who says that a cod has no expression ? It may not have a fine open countenance for the portrayal of delicate emotions, but expression it undoubtedly has. Here is one with gaping mouth and expanded gills, meaning, as any one may observe, blank astonishment. Its neighbour, by the curl of its tail, compression of the jaws, and determination of the eye, informs us that it died in a state of impotent rage. The little three-pound rock codling, meekly stretched out with fins demurely smoothed down and lips modestly parted, is a touching picture of resignation. Another fish must, from the turn of his half-closed eyes and funnily displayed fins, have been a humourist in whom the ruling passion was strong in death. The cod, thus examined, would seem to be, on the whole, a rather genial fellow, very eligible, if such pursuits obtain down yonder, for evening parties and the like. Not so the wicked, leering conger, whom every man and boy in passing kicks and execrates. The brute is eight feet long, and sullen and murderous every inch of him. But the sale is beginning, and — hear it not, London house- keeper, to whom the boiled cod's head and shoulders served up with oyster-sauce, lemon, and horse-radish (pray never forget that pungent garnishing), is not a trifle — half a dozen fish are knocked down for two-and-ninepence. A worthy Gray's Inn solicitor, keeping me company, waxes so excited at this richness that he buys half a dozen lots in succession, Modern Yarmouth. 27 and sends them to London by the next train for distribution amongst his friends and clients. The natural inference in town is that he has caught them himself, and as he takes no pains to explain otherwise he is now renowned in club and chambers as the finest long-shore fisherman in the profession. The Yarmouth girls engaged in the herring trade work very hard while the season lasts, but they need not swear so much. Some of them, I fear, are a terribly rough set. They are sitting about outside the wharf on barrels, or logs, or baskets, eating their dinner with fishy hands, and shout- ing unrepeatable jokes to the men : coarse in feature, slovenly and dirty in dress, wearing heavily hob-nailed boots, they are a caricature on "the gentler sex." The tavern hard by is full of them drinking at the bar, and who shall blame them when there is no other apparent accom- modation ? It would be a boon in the interests of charity and decency alike to provide in the neighbourhood of this prosperous wholesale fish-market a workwoman's hall, where wholesome food and shelter would be provided for them at a reasonable rate. These women might, of course, take their meals amongst the fish and salt in the sheds where they work, but, as one of them suggested to me, they prefer a change of scene during their dinner hour. But it must not be supposed that this is a fair type of all the women who are employed in the herring trade ; they are only the " residuum." When in full work in the curing sheds, a skilful and industrious woman can earn a pound a week, and many are as respectable in reality as in appearance. On the Denes yesterday there were three or four girls repair- ing nets ; they wore fashionable chignons, black silk dresses, smart hats, and no doubt represented the aristocracy of the Yarmouth workwomen. What a pity it is that these 28 By Stream and Sea. picklers, packers, and curers do not wear some such neat costumes as those in fashion amongst the French fish- women ! By turning into the yard to the left, we may watch the process of herring pickling. The fish brought here, it should be explained, are the herring which have been salted at sea; that, at least, is the technical expression. In reality, the fish are simply sprinkled with salt as they are thrown into the hold. By this process the fishermen are enabled to remain afloat for days together, and this a run of ill luck renders a disagreeable necessity. The fortunate ones are those who, sailing out of harbour to-day, are able to return to- morrow morning with a cargo of fresh herrings, which are despatched as such with all speed. The fish which the women occupying our shed are manipulating are first washed by men, then passed on to the female hands who pack them into barrels with Lisbon salt between the layers, and finally nailed in by a cooper who is ready with the caskhead. Fish thus treated are shipped to various parts of the United Kingdom, especially to Scotland and to the Continent, and are intended for almost immediate consump- tion. Some of these lasses, I have said, are dreadfully rough : it is an expression I cannot recall, nor dare I say that their converse, their jests, or their songs are in any sort of fashion womanly; but they are thoroughly good- tempered and overflowing with animal spirits, and there is room for hope that they are not so bad as they seem. The classic bloater is, or is supposed to be, a fresh fish faintly cured. It is a popular error to suppose that it is a distinct species, a kind of upper class fish, born, bred, and educated in exclusive shoals. It is only a herring of the best quality, and it may be selected from the mass. Nothing is more foreign to a generous man's nature than to play the Modern Yarmouth. 29 Iconoclast with a household god, and it would ill become me to skake the British nation's faith in her savoury bloater. But it is said that numbers of the so-called Yarmouth B. come from Ireland and Scotland, and are doctored and palmed off to confiding breakfast-tables as the real original article. When every purchaser of a herring insists upon its being a bloater, a Yarmouth bloater, and a hard-roed Yarmouth bloater, it is clear something must be done to keep up the supply. However, let us confine ourselves to what is being done under our own observations. The " herring office," where the fish are converted into bloaters, is a very singular place. Upon the ground floor the herrings recently arrived from the wharf are shot out of the swills upon the stones, transferred by great wooden shovels into a huge tub, thoroughly washed, and passed on to women — a much better type than those working about the wharf and in the ruder sheds — who thread them through one of the gill covers upon a long slender lath called a " spit," which accommodates five-and-twenty fish. The spits are then taken up into the smoke-room, a lofty, barn-like apartment, full of dark-coloured frames and beams from floor to roof. The spits, charged with herrings, are placed horizontally in niches which receive the ends of the stick, the tiers extend- ing to the ceiling overhead. The only aperture in this dusky room is in the centre of the roof, the great object being, when the drying process begins, to "draw" the smoke. The room being filled with tiers, containing sometimes as many as a hundred thousand fish, small wood fires — of oak, if possible — are kindled over the stone floor, and maintained without flame. The uncemented tiles above, and the one opening in the roof, promote a free draught, while the smoke from the oaken logs gives a fine colour to the fish. For certain markets where a particular colour is demanded, ash 3o By Stream and Sea. billets are substituted for oak. A few hours in the smoke- room are sufficient for a bloater, and the lower spits are used for that description of article. The fish higher up are left to dry according to the will of the curer, the last to be removed coming down as veritable red herrings. We have now seen the fresh herring sold and despatched, the pickled herring lightly salted and barreled, the bloater and red herring cured to a turn in the smoke-room, but there yet remain the kippers. The veteran boatman and fisherman pretend to know nothing about this process of kippering, which they regard as a new-fangled notion that will ruin the country if persisted in. Probably they would think more kindly of it had it not been of Scotch origin. But there it is, increasing in importance every year. It employs large numbers of thrifty, homely women, mostly Scotch. The best quality of fish must be selected for kippering; no salt is used; the herrings are most carefully cleansed, and deli- cately and artistically smoked. Mr. Buckland, in a recent Report on our East Coast Fisheries, estimates that a thousand lasts of herring per year are now required for kippering. Yarmouth, however, does not live by herrings alone. Trawling is an equally important branch of the local trade. When the bloom is gone from the herring season the boats refit, and, under the generic name of smacks, spend the winter in trawling, a much more hazardous occupation than drifting, and altogether different in its nature. The drift- net entangles the shoal swimming near the surface; the trawl sweeps the bottom. The one captures herrings, with a very occasional mackerel or cod in the meshes ; the other brings up the more remunerative sole, haddock, plaice, turbot, brill, and whiting. It is stated in Mr. Buckland's interesting little Blue-book that the North Sea trawling- ground covers, according to Yarmouth calculation, 50,000, Modern Yarmouth. 31 and according to Grimsby calculation, 130,000 square miles; that is to say, it extends from the North Foreland to Dun- cansby Head in the Pentland Firth, and from the coast of England to that of Norway. While, forty years ago, there were but two Yarmouth vessels engaged in trawling, some four hundred boats now sail from the Yare. In this matter Yarmouth and Gorleston have prospered at the expense of Barking, whose fleet of smacks was transferred to the more convenient harbours of Norfolk. The trawlers composing the North Sea fleet are good sea boats, well found, and manned by excellent seamen, who dare much and do much that is never known to the world. The smacks remain at sea from six weeks to two months at a time, and, as the voyages fall in the depth of the winter, the close of every season brings a sad tale of missing boats and men. There was a memorable gale in November, 1863, which in one night destroyed seven Hull trawlers with all hands, and disabled twenty other boats. The trawling fleets are sometimes composed of vessels from various ports ; but there are a few wealthy merchants who own entire fleets of from sixty to eighty smacks. An admiral of the fleet is appointed by popular election, and from his vessel signals are made directing the movements of the fleet. At night the orders are given by " flare-ups " — flashes of light visible, like meteors, for miles over the watery waste. According to the number of flare-ups the fleet goes about, or lies to, or takes in fishing-gear. Passing along the beach just now, I noticed a hand- somely built and smartly rigged cutter speeding towards shore, light and swift as a sea-bird. Simultaneously you might have observed unusual commotion in one of those lofty watch-towers on the esplanade, which are never deserted. The cutter is not a gentleman's private yacht, as 32 By Stream and Sea. may be supposed from its general appearance,, -but one of the swift carriers running between the fleets ' and the Yar- mouth beach with the produce of their trawling. The signalman caught sight of her through his telescope some time since, and long before the cutter brings up as near the shore as is consistent with safety the carts will be drawn up along the shore and the men standing by to ply the " ferry- boats " — the heavy black barges to which reference has been previously made. The cutter brings a variety of fish, carefully packed for the distant markets to which they are to be despatched. To appear on the fishmonger's slab in good condition fish should be taken from the water alive — not battered to death in the trawl-nets — and immediately packed. Fish caught in the trawl are known in the trade as either " prime " or "offal," the former comprising soles, turbot, brill, and dorys, and the latter gurnards, plaice, haddocks, skate, etc.; and the "prime" are honoured with better packing- cases than their coarser brother captives. The carrier, arriving by night or day (in the darkness he announces his coming by the useful flare-up, and with such accuracy that the signalman at once knows the particular vessel challenging his attention), will certainly find every- thing ready for the reception of his cargo, and in a couple of hours the fish-train, a special, if necessary, will be on its way to Billingsgate. The cutter, therefore, which we have this afternoon watched tearing through the waves at ten knots an hour, will have been the means of supplying fresh stores of fish to the London retail dealers by breakfast time to-morrow morning. Some of the carriers run straight from the fleet to London, and there is a London steamer engaged in the Dogger-bank trade. A steamer tried, however, in Yarmouth for the same purpose a year or two since, was not Modern Yarmouth. 33 found to answer. The use of ice is now thoroughly under- stood on board these smacks, and a brisk shore industry is carried on while there is ice upon the adjacent broads ; though Norway ice, brought to Yarmouth ice-houses in white Norwegian ships, is preferred. The soles and other favourite flat-fish seem to be getting scarcer and scarcer every year, and competent judges attri- bute the declension to the wholesale destruction of small fry on the spawning-grounds near the Dutch coast. A Gorleston smack-owner told Mr. Buckland that he saw hundreds of vessels trawling in the great fish nursery of the North Sea, which, twenty miles in width, extends from the German coast to the Texel, and destroying every night at least a hundred tons of small fish. From the North Fore- land far into the North Sea there are numerous fishing banks well defined on the smacksman's charts, and productive of the finest soles, which are found there (the water being deep) in the coldest weather in immense numbers. The Dutch trawlers are great sinners against fisherman's law. The Dutch smacks being of smaller draught than ours, the fishing is conducted too near the shore whenever it may be done with impunity. The Germans, by the effective argument of an ever-present gun-boat, take care of their coast fisheries by allowing no trawling inside nine fathoms of water. At any rate, the spawning-grounds ought to be protected ; and Mr. Frank Buckland will have done excellent service by the forcible manner in which he has called the attention of the Government to evils that English, Germans, and Dutch alike are peculiarly interested in remedying. The smacksman toils hard for his living, amidst perils of which we, who are snugly housed ashore, little wot The ; operation most dreaded by him is the conveyance of the | packages of fish from his smack to the carrier cutter. The D 34 By Stream and Sea. transfer is effected in the smack's little boat, and frequently in most dangerous seas. Many a man and boy have perished in the performance of this hazardous duty. A ramble through Yarmouth — fish-market, Denes, curing- houses, rows, streets, market-place — will always be appropri- ately terminated by a final stroll along the marine parade, piers, and jetty. After a long spell of north or south winds, there are not far from a thousand sail lying in the safe anchorage of the roadstead. It is computed that 50,000 vessels annually pass and repass within sight of shore, and a sea-scape so animated is always worth studying. Yonder dark, heavily laden brig, voyaging southward, is a collier carrying coals from Newcastle to London. Close behind her follows a round-nosed barque, listing to starboard more heavily .than the wind justifies; she is a Baltic timber ship whose cargo has shifted, as such cargoes will, during yester- day's gale. The screw trading steamers leave behind them long lines of foam below, and long lines of black smoke above. A mist steals gradually over all, and each object dissolves into a shadow and is no more seen. The inshore fisherman and the amateur anglers wend their homeward way, with their strings of codling and whiting, and Yarmouth ashore settles 'down to the quiet leisure of evening at the precise moment when Yarmouth afloat settles down to a night's hard, and let us hope remunerative, work, CHAPTER III. A SPRING RAMBLE BY THE ITCHEN. SPRING ramble, do I say? To be sure, by all law and precedent, there can- not be any doubt that this is spring-time, for we are in the first week of April, the month when the sealed caskets of nature silently and gradually unlock in beautiful response to warm sunshine and soft showers. At least so used it to be; but the grand vernal movement for which we have hoped so intensely during the murderous blasts of a severely protracted winter seems still reluctant to gladden our eyes in its full April measure. The farmers and gardeners do not object to a little reasonable backwardness of season, for anything in the shape of forwardness, you may generally take it, with most kinds of vegetation, as with men and women, boys and girls, is unsafe, and not to be desired by those who are wise enough to look to ultimate issues. Yet it would be pleasanter, as we sally forth, were we not cut and slashed so mercilessly by the bitter wind, and were we able to realize even in a faint degree all the sweet adjuncts with which poets invest April skies and spring landscapes, 36 By Stream and Sea, But (fortunately, who shall question ?) it is not for mortals to command in these things ; not one of us by taking thought can add another bud to the boughs, or develope another flower in the hedgerows. Masses of slate-coloured clouds roll over the fine old city of Winchester as I wait in a porch for the carriage which is to convey us to Itchen-side, and — miserable luck ! — the hailstones storm us in volleys, making the windows of the cathedral over the way rattle again, and covering the green grass of the churchyard with tiny dancing hop-o'-my-thumbs which speedily are gone for ever. The carriage cometh not; up the street and down the street we look, and still the chariot wheels delay their coming. It is but a step across to the cathedral, and we may spend a profitable quarter of an hour there. Moreover, it is a spot of peculiar interest to the angler. The antiquarian loves Winchester Cathedral because of its hoary historical associations with the period when the White City of the Downs was fortified by the Romans, who established there their College of Priests, and upon its site — or near enough to it for argumentative purposes — erected their temples of Apollo and Concord. The connoisseur of architecture loves the low-towered church for the wonderful combination of many schools which it represents. Rebuilt with crypts by Ethelwold, after the rude handling of Danish invaders, Bishop Walkelyn introduced nave and transepts in massive Norman style. This was the Walkelyn whose tower is supposed to have fallen in horror at the burial in con- secrated ground of His Majesty William Rufus, who, you may remember, having been sent to his last account by Master TyrrelPs arrow in the forest yonder, was brought hither in a charcoal-burner's cart. Then we have the Right Reverend Godfrey de Lucy's Early English, and famous A Spring Ramble by the lichen. 37 William of Wykeham's substitution for the Norman of the severely beautiful Perpendicular. Cromwell had a word or 'two to say, necessarily, about the decorations of our cathedral, but, as well-preserved specimens of all the above styles remain, though amidst many incongruities, it may be well observed that to the student of architecture Winchester Cathedral is an object of admiration. The angler, though I will not do him the heinous injustice to hint that he cares for none of these things, remembers the cathedral for another reason. He passes by Walkelyn's Norman work in the north transept, the corner by which, descending to the crypt, may be inspected the most ancient architectural features of the structure, and makes his way towards the eastern side to the little chapel, to which the name of Silkstede is given; but its singular wirework and other peculiarities are of secondary consideration, for here lie the bones of dear old Izaak Walton. The good angler was a great traveller for his time. There were few parts of England unfamiliar to him. He fished many rivers, north and south j in Worcester Cathedral he buried his wife, " a woman of remarkable prudence and of primitive piety, who was blest with general knowledge, true humility, and Christian meekness," and who was therefore a worthy mate of the man who could write no higher praise of Dean Nowel, of St. Paul's, th