was busy with his duties to the last hour of his life. On the morning of the day on which his eyes were closed for ever he looked over the forthcoming number of Punch and made some suggestions.

He was at peace with all the world. He had blessed his wife for the loving care with which she had watched over him. His boys were at home with him. And he turned gently on his side, and fell into his long sleep, leaving hosts of friends to mourn him, and not an enemy that I ever heard of, to assail his memory.

WATERSIDE SKETCHES.

II. THE MAY-FLY.

AY has nearly run its course. We have an ancient promise that the seasons shall never fail, and though sometimes our variable climate makes it difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between summer and winter, in the long run you may be sure seed-time and harvest come round in very much the same fashion as they appeared to our forefathers. I pack my portmanteau as I make these sage reflections, and am grateful that the spring has been one of the time-honoured sort. March winds prevailed at the proper time, the April showers fell softly, and the May flowers bloomed without delay. And there has arrived a letter announcing the advent of the green drake.

May-fly fishing is not, to my mind, altogether a satisfactory style of angling, yet I grieve me much if the May-fly season passes without taking advantage of it. The fish are so terribly on the "rampage' at this time that it seems like catching them at a mean disadvantage. The silly trout evidently take leave of their senses for a fortnight or so, at the close of May or beginning of June, and, of all ranks and sizes, lay themselves out for unlimited gorge. The angler, however, places himself more on an equality with his game if he forswears the live fly. If I were asked for my advice I should say:-Never use any but the artificial May-fly, if you would live with a clear conscience; then you will have the additional gratification of knowing that the special difficulty experienced in producing a really good imitation is a slight set-off against the greediness of the trout at the May-fly period.

Cotton, who even in these times of increasing piscatorial literature and research very well holds his own as an authority on fly-fishing, speaks of May-flies as the "matadores for trout and grayling,” and he adds that they kill more fish than all the rest, past and to come, in the whole year besides. It should be remembered that Cotton was then writing of the picturesque Dove, not so superbly stocked with trout and grayling now as it was in his days, but still as limpid and romantic as when Piscator welcomed his disciple to the Vale of Ashbourn with "What ho! bring us a flagon of your best ale"-the

good Derbyshire ale which Viator had the sense to prefer, scouting. the idea that a man should come from London to drink wine in the Peak.

As a rule-and there are not many exceptions to it-the flies that suit one river fail on another; but the May-fly is the touch of nature which makes all rivers kin. With some allowance for difference of size, your May-fly will answer on any stream, or on lake and stream, during the few days in which the green and grey drakes make the most of their chequered existence. What Cotton wrote of the Dove will therefore apply to streams that in no other respect could be compared with it.

It is not the Dove to which I am bound. My stream is not half so well known either to anglers or to the non-angling world. It has' a name nevertheless, and appears accurately marked upon the Ordnance Map. Let us for convenience sake call it the Brawl. In most instances you will not err greatly in disliking the fisherman who refuses to tell his brother where to find sport, and in my next sketch, in which I propose to take you to Thames-side, I shall have somewhat to say of a certain modern selfishness against which anglers should watchfully guard. It is true, necessity has no law, and the necessity is often laid upon one, sadly against his will, of withholding information which might be of service to a brother angler. He may be the best and most generous hearted fellow in the world, but he may lack that essential backbone of wisdom, discretion. A few years. ago a Lancashire nobleman generously gave ordinarily decent persons leave to fish a well-stocked pike water—a privilege which many used and enjoyed. One day the pike were "on the move," as the saying goes, and two tradesmen who had secured the required permission were able by a liberal employment of live bait to row ashore at night with nearly two hundredweight of slain fish. Worse than that, a local paper made the achievement the subject of high eulogium, and congratulated "our worthy townsmen" on their prowess. What was the result? The noble owner himself assured me he received two hundred and forty applications in three weeks, and that he would. never more allow other than personal friends to cast line into the water. And he has kept his word.

Therefore the stream now in question shall be named the Brawl, and I give fair warning that the rest of my nomenclature is, with the same design, drawn from the source whence a member of Parliament was accused of drawing his facts—namely, the imagination. There is no objection to your knowing that the spot is not far from the cradle of the queenly Thames; so near, in fact, that you may almost hear

the first bubblings of the infant river. Green hills stand in rich undulations of pasture high above the surrounding country, giving to the sheep grazing on the luscious downs a name that is distinctive and far known. The Brawl does not rise, as many streams do, through the silver-sanded floor of a bubbling spring sequestered in the dell, but it spurts sharply out of a hill side, and commences its course, as it were, with a grand flourish of trumpets and waving of flags. I have often wondered whether Tennyson had the Brawl in his mind's eye when he wrote "The Brook." The forget-me-nots are there, and the cresses, and the shallows, and the windings, but not the grayling, although to be sure the grayling might have been added in the interests of rhyme or for the sake of euphony.

When a man travels the best part of a hundred miles for one day's amusement he is generally prepared to crowd as much work into that day as human possibilities allow. How fresh the country looks in its May garment of many colours, and how majestically the sun. rolls behind the great hills towards which I am rattling in the ravenous express! As if the landscape is not already gay enough with its foliage and flowers, the sun clasps it in a parting embrace, and at the touch it becomes radiant and rosy and soft.

The village is hushed in repose by the time I am left, the only passenger, on its rude platform, and the hoary churchyard is wrapped in shadow that becomes weird and black in the avenue of cypress and yew. The bats wheel hither and thither over the housetops, and beetles drone as they fly. The last roysterer-he is sober as a judge, and it is but ten o'clock-is leaving the Hare and Hounds at the moment I lift the latch to enter. The landlord eyes my rod and basket, and glances sidelong at me during supper time. Seemingly his thoughts are sworn in as a common jury trying my case, and the verdict appears to be in my favour. I have just been bargaining with him for a waggonnette to-morrow, and he takes an interest in my doings, hopes I shall have a fine day, good sport, and plenty of it. Lastly, he informs me that he himself is a rodster, and proprietor of a willow bed through which runs about two hundred yards of the Brawl, and that if I would like to try my casts upon it in the morning before starting up the country I am welcome so to do. He does not give this privilege to every one, he says, and could not if he would, since he has let the right of fishing to an old gentleman living on the spot, reserving to himself the power which he now offers to exercise in my favour. The programme for to-morrow includes a small lake across country, and then a drive of six miles into the uplands to where the newly-born Brawl turns its first mill-wheel. Still, no

reasonable offer or likely chance should be refused, and the landlord's kindness is accepted with thanks.

Before the lark is fairly astir next morning I am being brushed by the dew-charged branches of the bushes in the landlord's willow bed. The tenant, the old gentleman previously spoken of, is known to the world as "the General." He was a sergeant of dragoons in his younger days, and now in the evening of life lives in a honeysuckled cottage overlooking the bit of animated stream in which he finds so much amusement. Perhaps if I had known this better I should not now be trespassing upon his preserves. Quite Arcadian the place must be; his rods, used beyond doubt last evening, he has left by the river, and they lie without attempt at concealment on the wet grass. It is a very likely locality for a good trout, and circumscribed as the bounds are, there are deeps, eddies, and scours in excellent condiMore by way of wetting the line than anything else, I cast up towards a sweeping shallow, around whose edge the pure water swirls. sharply, and at the second throw rise, and to my surprise hook a fish. The accident being attributed by the landlord to masterly skill, he stands by admiringly and excitedly with the net. The trout, however, is in no hurry, and he has run straight into a forest of weeds, from which it seems impossible to extricate him without loss of tackle and time. The landlord rushing to the cottage for a pole brings with him "the General," half dressed, and in a pitiable state of alarm and anxiety. Almost with tears and in broken accents he

says:

"I've been working three days for that fish, sir, early and late; he rose once yesterday, and twice the day before."

Poor old General! I feel sorry indeed, but sorrow cannot undo the unconscious wrong I have perpetrated! After tremendous exertions with a pole and hay-rake we loosen the tangled weeds, and the trout comes in on his side, not the patriarch we had supposed, but a burly little fellow nearly as large as a Yarmouth bloater. Then "the General" rejoices, and I too rejoice on hearing that "that fish" which has been tantalising him all the year is still left to rise again. "The General" begs me to remain for five minutes, and disappears. In his absence I notice that he has been using the live drake, the dead fly, a humble bee, and a worm. Those baits remain transfixed as he left them last evening, and admirably do they conceal the hooks. Now he reappears with a ruddy-faced girl, his daughter, who having studied the artificial fly which has proved so effectual, hurries back into the cottage to manufacture one exactly like it.

Sir Melton Mowbray did not hesitate to grant me a day's fishing