SOME BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 189 



They would rush out beneath the dipping willows, 

 sniff at the cheese-bait, retire if not hungry, or 

 swallow it at a gulp, and play a remarkably good 

 game at trying to escape. They are handsome 

 fish, but I cannot endorse Izaak Walton's pro- 

 nouncement that they, with their labyrinth of 

 bones, are " good meat." 



In Chaucer's days, when pilgrims journeyed on 

 foot from London to the shrine of St. Thomas a 

 Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, they invariably 

 rested on the final stage of their weary tramp, at 

 an abbey, some twenty miles distant from their 

 goal, where they were hospitably welcomed, and 

 sent forth refreshed in body and soul. 



Gone is that abbey, all save an archway or two, 

 and a wall here and there. Gone are the abbots 

 and priors, nought left but their bones crumbling 

 to powder in the stone coffins that thickly strew a 

 grassy close. No more do processions, to the 

 sound of deep-toned organs, wend their way, 

 amidst swinging incense, down aisle and nave to 

 the high altar blazing with light and colour. No 

 longer does the refectory table groan with good 

 cheer, and the blackjacks of Kentish ale circulate 

 amongst the half-famished wayfarers. Nothing 

 remains as it was six hundred years ago, save 

 a garden wherein, surrounded by tall Madonna 



