228 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



wont to be held begins to shew symptoms of disre- 

 pair. Its kirtle gay of briers and woodbines now 

 hangs about it in careless shreds the thatch has 

 been partly torn away, while what remains thereof 

 is furred over with wind-sown mosses; there is a 

 huge fissure from base to chimney-top at one end 

 of the building, and several great stones are com- 

 mencing their escape outward above the porch. Its 

 diamond-shaped panes, moreover, are many of them 

 supplanted by patches of vellum abstractions, pro- 

 bably, from some ancient manuscript formerly pos- 

 sessed by our club, and left, unthought of, to the 

 spoiler's mutilating hand. 



Ah ! and our hostess too our mirth-loving, kind- 

 hearted landlady, is no longer to be seen. A stranger 

 fills her place. The tones of sweet humour and 

 benevolence which circled below her hospitable roof 

 are exchanged for the austere brawlings of a drunken 

 publican. There is a sign-board also, swinging 

 aloof over the door-way, with the likeness of a fish 

 pictured upon it surely not that of a salmon a 

 creature set and proportioned so singularly never 

 cleft the flood ; it seems a compound of the tench 

 and the tad-pole, and is coloured over with a sloughy, 

 blue mixture, such as might be formed from the 

 cleanings of some well-daubed palette. At one end 



