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 I. 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 not, 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 t 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 exceedingly kind and free to him who deserves so much.

As in the title-page [of Part II.]-Iz. Wa.

† Tradition does not point out the room; but Mr Bagster has, in his edition of Cotton given an engraving of the carved mantelpiece of a bedroom, which," he observes, though it may not be the very room that Walton slept in, many circumstances unite to lead to that conclusion." In 1825 there were two bedrooms with similar carved mantelpieces existing, which were then used only as lumber or cheese rooms; and in Alstonefield church is a pew with the back finely carved with the arms of Cotton on the panels.-P.