to By Stream and Sea. 



The remainder of the Colne valley may be not less pic- 

 turesque than that we have left behind, and to which we 

 must presently return, and it possesses historic interest. 

 The mansion of Harefield— we are now in Middlesex with 

 Buckinghamshire across the river — was visited by Queen 

 Elizabeth, who halted there as the guest of Lord Keeper 

 Egerton, and the new play of " Othello " was performed 

 there by Shakespeare's own company, with Shakespeare 

 himself, in all probability, in the cast. 



This was in 1602, and thirty years later the Countess 

 Dowager of Derby had for her guest a man who was in 

 other ways associated with the locality — the poet Milton. 

 For her he wrote his "Arcades," which was represented 

 at Harefield by some noble persons of her own family. 

 Milton was a frequent visitor at Harefield while he lived at 

 Horton, and lower down there still, I believe, is to be seen 

 the cottage (at Chalfont St. Giles) hired for the blind poet 

 by Quaker Ellwood when the inhabitants of London were 

 driven afield by the Plague. It is pretty well authenticated 

 that the greater portion, if not the whole, of "Paradise 

 Regained" was written in this retreat. Before this time, 

 however, the famous mansion at Harefield had fallen victim 

 to its own hospitality, for the gay Sir Charles Sedley being 

 one of the guests, and reading in bed, set fire to his bed- 

 furniture, and thus burnt the house down. 



Historical, too, to anglers is the Colne through the use 

 made of it by Sir Humphrey Davy in " Salmonia." The 

 worthy inventor of what is still the Safety Lamp has been 

 often laughed at by scientific naturalists, but for all that we 

 ought to be thankful for the illness which, rendering him, to 

 use his own words, " wholly incapable of attending to more 

 useful studies, or of following more serious pursuits;" gave 

 us his charming little work as the amusement of his leisure 



