i6& Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



Walton and Cotton lived in troublous times, but if I bave any gift of 

 forecast, there be more troublous times before us than England ever knew 

 yet, and the happy peaceful valleys through which our favourite streams 

 meander will not be happy and peaceful many years longer.* What has 

 thus shadowed my happy thoughts of fish and fishing amidst the loveliest 

 scenes in England ? I hardly know, save that pleasure and pain, L' Allegro 

 and II Penseroso, are always close together in this mortal strife. But 



Hence loathed Melancholy, 



Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight bom, 



In Stygean cave forlorn. 



* # * # # 

 There, under ebon shades of low-browed rocks 

 As ragged as thy locks, 



In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 

 But come thou goddess, fair and free, 

 In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne. . . . 



Let us go forth and " wander " 



Not unseen 

 By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 



• * * * # 

 While the ploughman, near at hand, 

 Whistles o'er the furrowed land ; 



And the milkmaid [Maudlyn, of course] singeth blythe. 



And the mower whets his scythe. 



And every shepherd tells his tale 



Under the hawthorn in the dale. 



Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures. 



While the landscape round it measures 



Russet lawns and fallows grey 



Where the nibbling flocks do stray. 



Mountains on whose barren breast 



The labouring clouds do often rest. 



Meadows trim and daisies pied. 



Shallow brooks and rivers wide. 



" Exactly so," as the beefeater says in " The Critic." That is what it 

 all comes to at last, "shallow brooks and rivers wide." Man made the 

 pond, but God made the river. There are few things in nature so lovely as 

 a river, and nothing perhaps so charming as a grayling river in fine order 

 Octoberwards, either in Shrops or Derbyshire. As that irresistible joker, 

 * Writ on the first of the new year, 1878.— F. F. 



