102 



THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



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Whither shall we go ? What need to ask ? there 

 is but one stream in the verdant valley, and 

 wherever we strike it our steps are sure to be 

 irresistibly led, upwards or downwards as the 

 case may be, to the mill, which for a century 

 has nestled among the great trees in the heart of 

 the valley, and has been so frequented by angling 

 visitors that it has earned the name of the Angler's 

 Paradise. 



Our way lies over meadows yellow with the low- 

 flowered celandine, the taller and more kingly 

 buttercups, and scattered clumps of nodding cows- 

 lips. It is a field of cloth of gold, the whole of 

 this low ground ; but in lieu of gaudily bedecked 

 knights and horses, there are only our sober selves 

 clad in homely grey, and red and white satin - 

 flanked cows, to view its loveliness. 



The hedges look like the spray of a waterfall 

 turned into emeralds, and set with pearly foam of 

 the blossoming thorns. On the uppermost branch 

 of a tall hazel clump a thrush is singing with all 

 his heart, his fawn-coloured throat throbbing with 

 the music of his voice ; while not far off, his mate 

 is sitting on her blue eggs, and listening proudly to 

 his epithalamium. 



In the pauses of his song you can hear another 

 and a merrier one, dropping faintly down from 

 that speck in the dazzling blue, which you know to 

 be a lark. 



Ah, there, too, is the first swallow skimming 



