Entrance to Dovedale, Looking up the Valley. 



" Sir, when I go a-fishing, an' the Fates decree that I get no 

 fish, then am I still a gainer; for, God's body ! I get flesh ! " 



HERE is a peculiar irony 

 in the fact that a man who 

 himself succeeded in re- 

 cording, with satisfying 

 amplitude of detail, the 

 lives of no fewer than five 

 of his contemporaries, should 

 have left so little record of his own career, 

 that nearly fifty years of it might be ade- 



263 



