by education and travel, set the highest value on his skill as a fisher, and his good management in preserving the fishery. A first-rate favourite was Adam Stokes.

His habitation was, as I have said, beautifully situated at a point of the Kennet where, winding suddenly round an abrupt hill, it flowed beneath a bank so high and precipitous, that but for its verdure it might have passed for a cliff, leaving just room on the bank for a small white cottage, the chimneys of which were greatly over-topped by the woody ridge behind them, while the garden on one side sloped in natural terraces from the hill to the river, and a narrow orchard on the other was planted ledge above ledge, like a vineyard on the Rhine. Fishing-nets drying on the fine smooth turf, and the boat fastened to a post and swaying in the water, completed the picture.

An unfrequented country road on the other side of the river was my nearest way to Talbot Park, and one day last March, driving thither in my little pony-phaeton, I stopped to observe Adam, who had just caught an enormous pike, weighing, as we afterwards found, above twenty pounds, and, after landing it on one side of the water, was busied in repairing a part of his tackle which the struggles of the creature had broken. It was still full of life as it lay on the grass, and appeared to me such a load, that, after complimenting Adam (who was of my acquaintance) on the luck that had sent, and the skill that had caught, such a fish, I offered to take it for him to the Park.

“Lord bless you, ma’am!” responded Master Stokes, eyeing my slight equipage and pretty pony, as well as the small lad who was driving me, with some slyness, “Lord help you, ma’am, you’ve no notion how obstropulous these great fishes be. He’d splash your silk gown all over, and mayhap overset you into the bargain. No, no—I’ve catched him, and I must manage him—besides, I want to speak to madam. Here, lad,” added he, calling to his boy, who, with Neptune, was standing on the opposite side of the river, watching our colloquy, “gather them violets on the bank; they’re always the first in the country; and bring the basket over in the boat to take this fellow to the great house—mind how you pick the flowers, you lubber, I want ’em for madam.”

Somewhat amused by seeing how my fair friend’s passion for flowers was understood and humoured, even by the roughest of her dependents, I pursued my way to the house, passed the pretty lodge and the magnificent garden, with its hothouses, greenhouses, and conservatories, its fountains and its basins, its broad walks and shady alleys; drove through the noble park, with its grand masses of old forest-trees—oak, and beech, and elm, and tree-like thorns, the growth of centuries; thridded the scattered clumps, about which the dappled deer were lying; skirted the clear lakelet, where water-fowl of all sorts were mingled with stately swans; and finally gained the house, a superb mansion, worthy of its grounds, at the door of which I met the colonel, who, pheasant-shooting and hunting and coursing being fairly over, intended to solace himself with shooting rabbits, and was sallying forth with his gun in his hand, and a train of long-bodied, crooked-legged, very outlandish-looking dogs at his heels, of a sort called the rabbit-beagle, reckoned very handsome, I find, in their way, but in my mind pre-eminently ugly. I did not, however, affront my kind host, a person whom everybody likes, in right of his frank, open, amiable character, and his delightful manners; I did not insult him by abusing his dogs, but, passing with a gracious salutation, we parted—he to his sport, and I to my visit.

If Colonel Talbot be a delightful man, Mrs. Talbot is a thrice delightful woman. To say nothing of the higher qualities for which she is deservedly eminent, I have seldom met with any one who contrives to be at the same time so charming and so witty. She is very handsome, too, and, combining her own full- blown and magnificent beauty with her love of that full-blown and beautiful flower, I call her the Queen of the Dahlias,—a nickname which she submits to the more readily, as her collection of that superb plant is nearly unrivalled. In March, however, even she, great forcer though she be, can hardly force a dahlia, so that I found her in her drawing-room without her favourite flower, but surrounded by stands of rhododendrons, azaleas, daphnes, pinks, lilies of the valley, and roses without end; and after first admiring and then deprecating her display of forced plants, as forestalling their natural blossoming, and deadening the summer pleasure, quoting to the same effect Shakespeare’s fine lines in the Love’s Labour Lost: