Too much fishing! It is no use to try to give you the good things of Izaak Walton, for it is with him as with Shakespeare. Two volumes of his "beauties" handed to gentle Elia. "This is all very well, my friend, but where are the other five volumes?" We must get out of Dovedale—that is clear. Allons donc!
Our stage to-day was to Chatsworth, twenty-four miles, where our Fourth of July dinner was to be celebrated. As we passed Ilam Hall we stopped, sounded our horn, and gave three cheers for the squire who had been so kind to his "American cousins."
Our luncheon was beside the pretty brook at Youlgreaves, on the estate of the Duke of Rutland, and a beautiful trout-stream it is. We could see the speckled beauties darting about, and were quite prepared to believe the wonderful stories told us of the basketfuls taken there sometimes. There is something infectious in a running stream. It is the prettiest thing in nature. Nothing adds so much to our midday enjoyment as one of these babbling brooks,
"Making music o'er the enamelled stones,
And giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
It overtaketh in its pilgrimage."
If there be "sermons in stones," I think it must be when the pure water sings as it rushes over them.
The Burnie.
The Charioteers demanded that I should repeat "The Burnie," a gem by a true poet, Ballantyne. Would you, my gentle reader, like also to know it? I think you would, for such as have followed me so far must have something akin to me and surely will sometimes like what I like, and I like this much:
"It drappit frae a gray rock upon a mossy stane,