house, of anything I ever saw it stands in a kind of peninsula too, with a delicate clear river about it. I dare hardly go in, lest I should not like it so well within as without but by your leave, I'll try. Why, this is better and better, fine lights, finely wainscoted, and all exceeding neat, with a marble table and all in the middle !

PISCATOR. Enough, Sir, enough, I have laid open to you the part where I can worst defend myself, and now you attack me there. Come, boy, set two chairs; and whilst I am taking a pipe of tobacco, which is always my breakfast, we will, if you please, talk of some other subject.

VIATOR. None fitter, then, Sir, for the time and place, than those instructions you promised.

PISCATOR. I begin to doubt, by something I discover in you, whether I am able to instruct you or no; though, if you are really a stranger to our clear northern rivers, I still think I can : and therefore, since it is yet too early in the morning at this time of the year, to-day being but the seventh of March, to cast a fly upon the water, if you will direct me what kind of fishing for a Trout I shall read you a lecture on, I am willing and ready to obey you.

VIATOR. Why, Sir, if you will so far oblige me, and that it may not be too troublesome to you, I would entreat you would run through the whole body of it; and I will not conceal from you that I am so far in love with you, your courtesy, and pretty More Land seat, as to resolve to stay with you long enough by intervals, for I will not oppress you, to hear all you can say upon that subject.

PISCATOR. You cannot oblige me more than by such a promise: and therefore, without more ceremony, I will begin to tell you, that my father Walton having read to you before, it would look like a presumption in me (and, peradventure, would do so in any other man) to pretend to give lessons for angling after him, who, I do really believe, understands as much of it at least as any man in England, did I not pre-acquaint you that I am not tempted to it by any vain opinion of myself, that I am able to give you better directions; but having, from my childhood, pursued the recreation of angling in very clear rivers, truly, I think, by much (some of them, at least) the clearest in this kingdom, and the manner of angling here with us, by reason of that exceeding clearness, being something different from the method commonly used in others, which, by being not near so bright, admit of