and shepherds scatter themselves, some days before, in busy cheerful companies, like bees, over the hills and down the dales, to cull their stores of wild flowers; and every one willingly robs his garden, for a contribution to the bowers and arbours that overhang the wells; and there they weave them into curious inventions of mottoes and scripture texts. And when the happy holy morning breaks, they come together to church; and after service they walk, with their loved and loving parson at their head, in a procession round about their ornamental wells, with music and singing of psalms: and so they pass the rest of the day in innocent mirth and country sports. And I may tell you, the many-coloured flowers of Dove Dale are offered for a tribute to this calendar festival.

PAINTER.-You have made me wish and resolve to see this well-flowering, come next Holy Thursday; and I shall love those sacred springs the better, since they help to chrystallize the waters of Bentley; for I have not seen a more inviting brook.

ANGLER. I will not say we shall come to clearer streams; nevertheless, I hope we may walk and angle by some others that are as good but thither she hurries on her way, rejoicing and being rejoiced; and I warrant she will find the Dove before you and I may do so. But come, here is another hill before us, hard by Thorpe Cloud; and I'll requite your patience by a vernal prospect. Follow me but a step to the left, and now what say you?

PAINTER.-Bless me, what an unusual wideskirted landskip.

ANGLER.-There before you are the mountains in Staffordshire over against Ilam; and yonder the Dove, which glides far off through the valley by Oakover Bridge, and after that meanders as far as Mayfield. There you may see hill and dale, and green pastures, with their thronging flocks and herds. Now tell me, Sir, is not merry England a place most fit for freehearted gentlemen to live in? And he that makes a journey throughout the different regions of our land shall meet a thousand vales as pleasant as this we now see: nay, some I could name are better, where you may look on all the diversified ornaments of golden corn fields, and pastures, and vallies and hills, rivers and plains; and round about many fine country mansionhouses, and bright steeples, gleaming through village-woods; and in the cities high cathedrals and collegiate churches, more venerable and sacred by reason of their daily appointed services and chaunts.

PAINTER.-But a man may travel some miles ere he shall light on a finer champaign than this before us. It calls to my mind how the prophet, from the top of Mount Pisgah, in the field of Zophim, lifted up his eyes, and saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes, and said, 'How goodly are thy tents, O 'Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel! as the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as ce

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'dar-trees beside the waters.' Long may the people of Britain be holy and stedfast in the church, and loyal to their king! then shall they resemble the tribes of Israel, having, as it were, the strength of an unicorn; they 'shall eat up the nations, their enemies, and "shall break their bones, and pierce them through 'with their arrows.' Then they shall couch, they shall lie down like a lion, and as a great lion; who shall stir them up? Then blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that 'curseth thee.' But what have we here, that is like a huge conical barrow? Let us climb to the top, that we may get a wider prospect of the landskip.

ANGLER.-The same Thorpe Cloud you saw so towering in the distance from Spittle Hill; but he now appears under another aspect, and before you could scale the height you must needs descend into a deep valley which lies be

tween us.

PAINTER.-Say you so? I can scarce believe it; for the distance looks to be less than a bow-shoot.

ANGLER. It is, nevertheless, true; and yonder, to the left, is Bunster Hill, in Staffordshire, that is like the back of a gigantic elephant: and between these two mountains flow the happy streams of the Dove; and that to the right hand is Black Moor: we have but two miles hence, and then our Dove.

PAINTER.-If so, let us mend our pace; but tell me, is this the way Mr. Cotton brought his friend?

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ANGLER.-The same; and all the while he entertained him with a discourse of the trouty rivers of his county of Derby, as, namely, the Dove, the Wye, the Derwent, and the great Trent, that wanders through many rich towns and forests, until it loses its name and waters in the sea.

PAINTER.-And is all Mr. Charles Cotton's treatise of fly fishing conducted in the form of a dialogue?

ANGLER.-Aye; and full of pertinent observations and exceeding plausibleness.

PAINTER.-Although I am willing to confess Mr. Walton's Angler to be a most persuasive book, because he knows how to qualify his discourse with all kinds of graceful changes and descriptions; yet methinks Mr. Cotton had no need to model his writings after the unusual example of a dialogue.

ANGLER.-By your leave, not so unusual; for have you forgot the many patterns that almost every age hath produced, of treatises, both learned and witty, in the form of colloquies? Let me bring to your mind that most subtil and philosophic dialogue, the 'Symposiac, or Banquet' of Plato, the most learned of the Grecians, wherein his master, Socrates, is made to discourse with a wisdom that seemed to be a scintillation of divine truth. And not only Plato's 'Banquet,' but his 'Alcibiades,' and others, so full of invincible arguments in support of virtue, as charmed the understanding of that age.

PAINTER. If you will go back to an

cient times, there are Tully Cicero's five days' disputations at his retired Tusculan villa with Marcus Brutus, where he persuades his hearers by the most notable arguments to the contempt of death.

ANGLER.And what say you of that banquet of Xenophon, at the Athenian festival of Minerva? for he gives us to understand how, after the show was finished, as he walked out of the city, he fell in with Socrates and others, discoursing together, and invited them civilly to supper; which they accepted, and went with him to his house at Piræum.

PAINTER.—I remember; and there they entertained each other with learned and profitable conversation.

ANGLER.-But neither the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, nor the eloquence of Tully, could match with that exalted wisdom of the apostolic fathers and martyrs, who have delivered to the Church the most clear interpretations of holy writ. And some of them unlocked the boundless treasures of celestial truth, and pointed the way to heaven, through the shadowings and darkness of error, by the medium of colloquies. As Hermas (who was the friend of St. Paul, that great apostle of the Gentiles) in his Pastor or Shepherd."

PAINTER.-Have not some learned men of our times, and, indeed, of the ancient fathers, questioned the authority of that book of Hermas?

ANGLER.-I may not deny that the cautious judgments of some are yet divided upon it but

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