father Walton will be seen twice in no man's company he does not like, and likes none but such as he believes to be very honest men, which is one of the best arguments, or at least of the best testimonies I have, that I either am, or that he thinks me one of those, seeing I have not yet found him weary of me.

Viator. You speak like a true friend, and, in doing so, render yourself worthy of his friendship. May I be so bold as to ask your name?

Piscator. Yes, surely, sir; and, if you please, a much nicer question: my name is and I intend to stay long enough in your company, if I find you do not dislike mine, to ask yours too. In the meantime, (because we are now almost at Ashborn,) I shall freely and bluntly tell you, that I am a brother of the angle too, and, peradventure, can give you some instructions how to angle for a Trout in a clear river, that my father Walton himself will not disapprove, though he did either purposely omit, or did not remember them, when you and he sat discoursing under the sycamore tree. And, being you have already told me whither your journey is intended, and that I am better acquainted with the country than you are, I will heartily and earnestly entreat you will not think of staying at this town, but go on with me six miles farther to my house, where you shall be extremely welcome; it is directly in your way, we have day enough to perform our journey, and, as you like your entertainment, you may there repose yourself a day or two, or as many more as your occasions will permit, to recompense the trouble of so much a longer journey.

Viator. Sir, you surprise me with so friendly an invitation, upon so short acquaintance; but how advantageous soever it would be to me, and that my haste, perhaps, is not so great but it might dispense with such a divertisement as I promise myself in your company, yet I cannot, in modesty, accept your offer, and must therefore beg your pardon: I could otherwise, I confess, be glad to wait upon you, if upon no other account but to talk of Mr Izaak Walton, and to receive those instructions you say you are able to give me for the deceiving a Trout, in which art I will not deny but that I have an ambition to be one of the greatest deceivers; though I cannot forbear freely to tell you, that I think it hard to say much more than has been read to me upon that subject.

Piscator. Well, sir, I grant that, too; but you must know, that the variety of rivers require different ways of angling: however, you shall have the best rules I am able to give, and I will tell you nothing I have not made myself as certain of, as any man can be in thirty years' experience, (for so long I have been a dabbler in that art ;) and that, if you please to stay a few days, you shall, in a very great measure, see made good to you.

But of that hereafter and now, sir, if I am not mistaken, I have half overcome you; and that I may wholly conquer that modesty of yours, I will take upon me to be so familiar as to say, you must accept my invitation; which, that you may the more easily be persuaded to do, I will tell you, that my house stands upon the margin of one of the finest rivers for Trouts and Grayling in England-that I have lately built a little fishing house upon it, dedicated to anglers, over the door of which you will see the two first letters of my father Walton's name and mine, twisted in cipher that you shall lie in the same bed he has sometimes been contented with, and have such country entertainment as my friends sometimes accept, and be as welcome, too, as the best friend of them all.

Viator. No doubt, sir, but my master Walton found good reason to be satisfied with his entertainment in your house; for you who are so friendly to a mere stranger, who deserves so little, must needs be exceeding kind and free to him who deserves so much.

Piscator. Believe me, no: and such as are intimately acquainted with that gentleman, know him to be a man who will not endure to be treated like a stranger. So that his acceptation of my poor entertainment has ever been a pure effect of his own humility and good nature, and nothing else. But, sir, we are now going down the Spittle Hill into the town; and, therefore, let me importune you suddenly to resolve, and most earnestly not to deny me.

Viator. In truth, sir, I am so overcome by your bounty, that I find I cannot, but must render myself wholly to be disposed by you.

Piscator. Why, that's heartily and kindly spoken, and I as heartily thank you. And, being you have abandoned yourself to my conduct, we will only call and drink a glass on horseback at the Talbot, and away.

Viator. I attend you. But what pretty river is this, that runs under this stone bridge? has it a name?

Piscator. Yes, it is called Henmore;* and has in it both Trout and Grayling; but you will meet with one or two better anon. And so soon as we are past through the town, I will endeavour, by such discourse as best likes you, to pass away the time till you come to your ill quarters.

Viator. We can talk of nothing with which I shall be more delighted than of rivers and angling.

At that time it was commonly so called, because it flowed through Henmoor; but its proper name is Schoo Brook. See a singular contest regarding the right of fishing in this brook, as reported in Burrows, 2279. Richard Hayne, Esq. of Ashborn, v. Uriah Corden, Esq of Clifton.

Piscator. Let those be the subjects then. But we are now come to the Talbot. what will you drink, sir-ale or wine?

Viator. Nay, I am for the country liquor, Derbyshire ale, if you please; for a man should not, methinks, come from London to drink wine in the Peak.

Piscator. You are in the right: and yet, let me tell you, you may drink worse French wine in many taverns in London than they have sometimes at this house. What, ho! bring us a flagon of your best ale. And now, sir, my service to you: a good health to the honest gentleman you know of, and you are welcome into the Peak.

Viator. I thank you, sir, and present you my service again, and to all the honest brothers of the angle.

Piscator. I'll pledge you, sir: so, there's for your ale, and farewell. Come, sir, let us be going, for the sun grows low, and I would have you look about you as you ride; for you will see an odd country, and sights that will seem strange to you.

CHAPTER II.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPAL RIVERS IN DERBYSHIRE. VIATOR LODGES AT PISCATOR'S HOUSE.

Piscator, jun. So, sir, now we have got to the top of the hill out of town, look about you, and tell me how you like the country.

Viator. Bless me! what mountains are here! are we not in Wales?*

Piscator. No, but in almost as mountainous a country: and yet these hills, though high, bleak, and craggy, breed and feed good beef and mutton above ground, and afford good store of lead within.

Viator. They had need of all those commodities to make amends for the ill landscape: but I hope our way does not lie over any of these, for I dread a precipice.

Piscator. Believe me, but it does; and down one especially, that will appear a little terrible to a stranger; though the way is passable enough, and so passable that we who are natives of these mountains, and acquainted with them, disdain to alight.

Viator. I hope, though, that a foreigner is privileged to use his own discretion, and that I may have the liberty to intrust my neck to the fidelity of my own feet, rather than to those of my horse, for I have no more at home.

It is very well for an Essex man to take for mountains, hills not much higher than the Calton Hill at Edinburgh, or Shooter's Hill at Woolwich.-J. R.

Piscator. 'Twere hard else. But, in the meantime, I think 'twere best, while this way is pretty even, to mend our pace, that we may be past that hill I speak of, to the end your apprehension may not be doubled for want of light to discern the easiness of the descent.

Viator. I am willing to put forward as fast as my beast will give me leave, though I fear nothing in your company. But what pretty river is this we are going into?

Piscator. Why this, sir, is called Bently Brook,* and is full of very good Trout and Grayling, but so encumbered with wood in many places, as is troublesome to an angler.

Viator. Here are the prettiest rivers, and the most of them, in this country that ever I saw: do you know how many you have in the country?

Piscator. I know them all, and they were not hard to reckon, were it worth the trouble: but the most considerable of them I

will presently name you. And to begin where we now are, for you must know we are now upon the very skirts of Derbyshire, we have, first, the river Dove, that we shall come to by and by, which divides the two counties of Derby and Stafford for many miles together, and is so called from the swiftness of its current, and that swiftness occasioned by the declivity of its course, and by being so strained in that course betwixt the rocks, by which (and those very high ones) it is, hereabout, for four or five miles, confined into a very narrow stream; a river that from a contemptible fountain, which I can cover with my hat, by the confluence of other rivers, rivulets, brooks, and rills, is swelled, before it falls into Trent, a little below Eggington, where it loses the name, to such a breadth and depth as to be in most places navigable, were not the passage frequently interrupted with fords and weirs; and has as fertile banks as any river in England, none excepted. And this river, from its head for a mile or two, is a black water, as all the rest of the Derbyshire rivers of note originally are, for they all spring from the mosses; but is in a few miles' travel so clarified by the addition of several clear and very great springs, bigger than itself, which gush out of the limestone rocks, that before it comes to my house, which is but six or seven miles from its source, you will find it one of the purest crystalline streams you have seen.†

A narrow swift stream, two miles beyond Ashbourn, in the present high road, and considerably neat er to it in the o'd road.

Between Beresford Hall and Ashbourn lies Dove Lale, whose crested cliffs and swift torrents are again noticed by Mr Cotton, in his Wonders of the Peak. Through this singularly deep valley the Dove runs for about two miles, changing its course, its motion, and its appearance perpetually, never less than ten, and rarely so nan, as twenty yards in width, making a continued noise by rolling over or falling among loose stones. The rocks which form its sides are heaved up in enormous piles, sometimes connected

Viator. Does Trent spring in these parts?

Piscator. Yes, in these parts; not in this county, but somewhere towards the upper end of Staffordshire, I think not far from a place called Trentham; and thence runs down, not far from Stafford, to Wolsly Bridge, and washing the skirts and purlieus of the forest of Needwood, runs down to Burton in the same county thence it comes into this, where we now are, and running by Swarkston and Dunnington, receives Derwent at Wildon; and so to Nottingham; thence, to Newark; and, by Gainsborough, to Kingston-upon-Hull, where it takes the name of Humber, and thence falls into the sea; but that the map will best inform you.

Viator. Know you whence this river Trent derives its name? Piscator, No, indeed; and yet I have heard it often discoursed upon when some have given its denomination from the forenamed Trentham, though that seems rather a derivative from it others have said it is so called from thirty rivers that fall into it, and there lose their names; which cannot be, neither, because it carries that name from its very fountain, before any other rivers fall into it: others derive it from thirty several sorts of fish that breed there; and that is the most likely derivation but be it how it will, it is doubtless one of the finest rivers in the world, and the most abounding with excellent Salmon, and all sorts of delicate fish.

Viator. Pardon me, sir, for tempting you into this digression; and then proceed to your other rivers, for I am mightily delighted with this discourse.

Piscator. It was no interruption, but a very seasonable question; for Trent is not only one of our Derbyshire rivers, but the chief of them, and into which all the rest pay the tribute of their names, which I had, perhaps, forgot to insist upon, being got to the other end of the county, had you not awoke my memory. But I will now proceed. And the next river of note, for I will take them as they lie eastward from us, is the river Wye; I say of note, for we have two lesser betwixt us and it, namely Lathkin and Bradford, of which Lathkin is, by many degrees, the purest and most transparent stream that I ever yet saw, either at home or abroad, and breeds, it is said, the reddest and the best Trouts in England: but neither of these are to be reputed rivers, being no better

with each other, and sometimes detached; some perforated in natural cavities, others adorned with foliage, with here and there a tall rock, having nothing to relieve the bareness of its appearance but a mountain ash flourishing at the top. The grandeur of its scenery is probably unri valled in England. - H.

It is utterly ridiculous to talk of the "grandeur" of Dove Dale. My impression, on visiting it in 1817, was, that it is prettily romantic-on so small a scale, that it might almost be artificially imitated.-J. R.