shop in Fleet Street, of a holiday, and, when he had stretched his legs
up Tottenham Hill, come lightly to meadows chequered with waterlilies
and lady-smocks, and so fall to his sport. Nay, now have the houses
so much increased, like a spreading sore (through the breaking of that
excellent law of the Conscientious King and blessed Martyr, whereby
building beyond the walls was forbidden), that the meadows are all
swallowed up in streets. And as to the River Lea, wherein you took many
a good trout, I read in the news sheets that 'its bed is many inches
thick in horrible filth, and the air for more than half a mile on each
side of it is polluted with a horrible, sickening stench,' so that we
stand in dread of a new Plague, called the Cholera. And so it is all
about London for many miles, and if a man, at heavy charges, betake
himself to the fields, lo you, folk are grown so greedy that none will
suffer a stranger to fish in his water.

So poor anglers are in sore straits. Unless a man be rich and can
pay great rents, he may not fish, in England, and hence spring the
discontents of the times, for the angler is full of content, if he
do but take trout, but if he be driven from the waterside, he falls,
perchance, into evil company, and cries out to divide the property of
the gentle folk. As many now do, even among Parliament, men, whom you
loved not, Father Isaak, neither do I love them more than Reason and
Scripture bid each of us be kindly to his neighbour. But, behold, the
causes of the ill content are not yet all expressed, for even where a
man hath licence to fish, he will hardly take trout in our age, unless
he be all the more cunning. For the fish, harried this way and that by
so many of your disciples, is exceeding shy and artful, nor will he bite
at a fly unless it falleth lightly, just above his mouth, and floateth
dry over him, for all the world like the natural _ephemeris_. And we may
no longer angle with worm for him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the
natural fly, as was your manner, but only with the artificial, for the
more difficulty the more diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator
in your book, 'Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second
Angle: I have no fortune.'

So we fare in England, but somewhat better north of the Tweed, where
trout are less wary, but for the most part small, except in the extreme
rough north, among horrid hills and lakes. Thither, Master, as
methinks you may remem