380 TIIE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART II. 



Viat. Stay, what's here over the door ? PISCATORIBUS 

 SACRUM ! 1 Why then I perceive I have some title here ; 

 for I am one of them, though one of the worst ; and here 

 below it is the cypher too you spoke of, and 'tis prettily 

 contrived. Has my master AValton ever been here to see 

 it ; for it seems new built ? 



Pise. Yes, he saw it cut in the stone before it was set up ; 

 but never in the posture it now stands : for the house was 

 but building when he was last here, and not raised so high 

 as the arch of the door. And I am afraid he will not see 

 it yet ; for he has lately writ me word, he doubts his coming 

 down this summer ; which, I do assure you, was the worst 

 news he could possibly have sent me. 



Fiat. Men must sometimes mind their affairs to make 

 more room for their pleasures : and 'tis odds he is as much 

 displeased with the business that keeps him from you, as 

 you are that he comes not. But I am the most pleased 



examining the small cellar, we found the other pedestal which supported 

 the marble table ; and against the door on the inside, three large fragments 

 of the table itself, which Avere of the Black Dove-dale Marble, bevelled on 

 the edges, and had been well polished. The inscription over the door, 

 and the cypher of Walton and Cotton in the key-stone, were very legible." 

 MAJOR. 



1 There is under this motto, the cypher mentioned in the title-page, and 

 some part of the fishing-house has been described ; but the pleasantness of 

 the river, mountains, and meadows about it, cannot, unless Sir Philip 

 Sidney or Mr. Cotton's father were again alive to do it. WALTON. Mr. 

 Bagster, who visited it in 1814, found it much dilapidated, the windows 

 unglazed, and the wainscot and pavement gone, but the cypher still legible. 

 In 1824 it is thus described by another writer : "Just above the Pike, 

 a small wooden foot bridge leads over the stream towards Hartshorn, in 

 Derbyshire. A little higher up on the Staffordshire bank, the winding of 

 the river forms a small peninsula, on which stands the far-famed fishing- 

 house ; but alas ! how changed. The windows are destroyed, the doors 

 decayed, and without fastenings; the roof dilapidated, and the vane, which 

 surmounted it, is rusty, and nodding to its fall. The fire-place alone 

 remains in good preservation. The entrance steps are covered with weeds, 

 and the inscription on the key-stone so overgrown with moss, that the first 

 word of the inscription is quite illegible." Gent. Mag., v. xcix., p. IL, p. 31, 

 (see p. 373). In August, 1825, the manor, hall, and about eighty-four acres of 

 land were sold to Viscount Beresford for 5500Z., since which time we learn from 

 Shipley and Fitzgibbon that "Cotton's fishing-house was repaired about three 

 years ago, and is now (1838) nearly in the same state as when the original 

 constructor described it. All these repairs and improvements are owing 

 to the good taste of the actual owner, the Marquis of Beresford." ED. 



