north, and the chill blast of 'Clarus Aquio' sends all the fish
shivering to the bottom; streams, in a word, where you may kill fish
(and large ones) four days out of five from April to October, instead
of having, as you will most probably in the mountain, just one day's
sport in the whole of your month's holiday. Deluded friend, who
suffered in Scotland last year a month of Tantalus his torments,
furnished by art and nature with rods, flies, whisky, scenery,
keepers, salmon innumerable, and all that man can want, except water
to fish in; and who returned, having hooked accidentally by the tail
one salmon--which broke all and ween to sea--why did you not stay at
home and take your two-pounders and three-pounders out of the quiet
chalk brook which never sank an inch through all that drought, so
deep in the caverns of the hills are hidden its mysterious wells?
Truly, wise men bide at home, with George Riddler, while 'a fool's
eyes are in the ends of the earth.'

Repent, then; and come with me, at least in fancy, at six o'clock
upon some breezy morning in June, not by roaring railway nor by
smoking steamer, but in the cosy four-wheel, along brown heather
moors, down into green clay woodlands, over white chalk downs, past
Roman camps and scattered blocks of Sarsden stone, till we descend
into the long green vale where, among groves of poplar and abele,
winds silver Whit. Come and breakfast at the neat white inn, of yore
a posting-house of fame. The stables are now turned into cottages;
and instead of a dozen spruce ostlers and helpers, the last of the
postboys totters sadly about the yard and looks up eagerly at the
rare sight of a horse to feed. But the house keeps up enough of its
ancient virtue to give us a breakfast worthy of Pantagruel's self;
and after it, while we are looking out our flies, you can go and chat
with the old postboy, and hear his tales, told with a sort of