Suddenly a rude outrageous villain began to swarm up towards the window [perhaps by a lamp iron], and, when he reached it, knocked on it with a steel gauntlet; and then cried with a loud voice to his friends below, 'Don't you want to have the traitors who have robbed us punished?' 'Yea, yea,' cried all below. 'And the cueillotte abolished?' 'Yea, yea.' 'And your other old privileges restored to you?' 'Yea, yea.' And then the villain turned to the Duke and said, ' My Lord, that is in brief the reason why these people are assembled there below; and they are here in order to see that you do it. And I, in the name of them all, declare that you have been told their needs.' 'Oh, glorious Majesty of God!' (says the chronicler) here was an outrageous and intolerable villainy for such a vile wretch to come and almost touch the flanks of his prince.'

Yet Charles was in such danger that he had to put up with it.

Gruthuse had the right word. Friend,' said he to the fellow, there was no need for you to climb up here, which is the place of your prince and his nobles; down there is your place. My Lord could have answered you just as well if you had been below; and, without having you for an advocate, he will do what his people wishes. You're a humorous fellow, but you had better climb down and disperse your friends.'

Charles had to abolish the tax to save his life. Chastellain concludes the story by pointing out that there were many excuses for the rioters, for the tax was a most iniquitous one.

He is never weary of pointing out the faults of princes, even of his favourite Duke Philip, though he reserves his most scathing criticism for the cruelties and treacheries of Louis XI. While he applauds that King's devotion to business and his determination to see and know every place and event in his kingdom, the truth is, 'hard as it is for me to write it, that he simply lived by stirring up quarrels between his relatives and neighbours': 'his poor subjects, who, when he came to the throne, thought they had got God by the feet, and would be relieved of the cruel taxes and impositions his father had laid on them,' were taxed till they could hardly live' his Court was a Court of dogs not of men'; while as for treachery,' princes, in order to reach their ends, welcome all treasons, though, because the name is a hateful one, they hate the traitors who perform them.'

There are in the Chronicle long passages on this subject, which for majesty of diction, for fearlessness of sentiment, and for utter conviction of the truth of the writer's warnings, can only be compared to the writings of the most philosophical historian of the Roman Empire.

I have been able only to give a specimen here and there of this wonderful book; but many other scenes might be profitably transcribed, notably a famous one which describes how Duke

Charles 'tint sa Toyson' (held his first Chapter of the Golden Fleece) at Bruges; portions of this read as if they were as accurate as a modern minute-book, and yet are illumined with all the splendours of diction of the dying Middle Age. It was a solemn chapter, for the old herald Jean de Saint-Rémy (himself a chronicler), who had held the office of herald to the Order from its foundation, was obliged to resign through old age. The Duke knighted him as some recompense for his long service, as at a subsequent Chapter he knighted Chastellain himself.

The last existing fragment of the Chronicle closes with the author straining his eyes across the Channel, where the indomitable Margaret, one of his own favourite heroines, is once more setting' Henry the Simple' (as the dear founder of Eton is always called in its pages) upon his throne, with the aid of the turncoat Warwick; and all the world at London is taking the Ragged Staff.' 1

C. R. L. FLETCHER.

1 Putting on the cognisance of the Earls of Warwick.

362

THE BROOKSIDE.

Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink
Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place
Where I may see my quill or cork down sink
With eager bite of perch or bleak or dace.

As soon as any really hot summer weather begins to make itself felt in London, when the grass in the parks is beginning to turn the colour of half-made hay, and specks of rust are visible here and there in the trees overhead, then it is that the born and bred countryman, condemned for his sins to pass his life in London, becomes the victim of a calenture. As he walks from Charing Cross to the Bank, from London Bridge to the Law Courts, cabs and omnibuses turn into harvest waggons, the dirty pavement into cool green pastures, and the stench of the motors is forgotten for the moment in the fragrance of the meadow-sweet and honeysuckle. Such is usually my own experience on the approach of the dog days. I find myself in imagination back in the old meadows clothed with the rich green of the aftermath, separated from each other by tall whitethorn hedges, on which the pink wild rose still lingers, and sheds its perfume on the angler as he rests on an adjacent haycock or courts the shade of the stately elms, which are the glory of the midland counties. In the olden days to which I am thus carried back, no doubt the principal attraction which drew me to the meadows was the brook which ran through them, fairly full of coarse fish-perch, roach, and chub-which sometimes reached a good weight. Now, however, I confess, as I recall these favourite haunts, it is rather their natural charms than their piscatorial temptations on which my imagination dwells, though I can still act over again to myself many an hour's good sport either with the perch or with the big chub which lay under the bushes, and which it was very difficult to reach.

I may as well say at the outset that I belong to the crookedpin school, and that I can promise my readers no dissertations on any more elaborate tackle for bottom fishing than a single hook attached to a foot of gut at the end of a silk line, and a cheap

rod with a reel, and sometimes without.

Of wiles more inexpert

I boast not.' I knew nothing in those days of double hooks, ledgers, or paternosters, which down till a comparatively recent period I believed to be only one form of Romish devotion. Washington Irving in his delightful Sketch Book' describes a fishing party, of which he formed one, sallying forth after reading Isaac Walton equipped with all the newest contrivances which the fishing-tackle maker had to show, and after working all day, with very little success, had the mortification of seeing 'a lubberly country urchin come down from the hills with a rod made from the branch of a tree, a few yards of twine, and, as Heaven shall help me, a crooked pin for a hook, baited with a vile earthworm, and in half an hour catch more fish than we had had nibbles throughout the day.' The reader will understand, then, that 'crooked pin' is only used metaphorically to denote the simplicity of my own equipment, with which, however, I managed to catch fish enough to silence home criticism, always rather disposed to be severe on unsuccessful sportsmen.

The brook which was the chief scene of my angling operations is dignified on old maps with the name of a river. It rises near a famous fox cover in the midland counties, and, running in a southwesterly direction, after a course of some five-and-twenty miles joins a tributary of the Trent. At the distance of about six or seven miles from its source it becomes a considerable stream, and, flowing through a gentleman's estate on which trespassers were looked after, held at that time plenty of fish, with some deep holes for them to lie in. It was good to be there between haytime and harvest, on the banks of the winding rivulet, now trickling over pebbly bottoms scarce an inch deep, now widening into quiet pools half-covered with water-lilies, now lost among the tall flags, or fringed with the grey-green willows, whose branches meeting overhead half conceal the fretting water underneath. The ground rising on either side of the large cool meadow is a mass of dark green foliage, through which you catch glimpses of cornfields, red with ripe wheat or yellow with oats and barley. Passing village churches just peeping through their ancient elms, and thick plantations from which towards evening you will see the hares and rabbits stealing out to feed, the brook at length emerges into a flatter and less ornate country, and finally loses itself in the great midland river on the confines of Leicestershire and Derbyshire.

I used often to spend a whole day on its banks, starting

from home after breakfast, with a book in my pocket, and beginning to fish about three miles further up the stream, and then fishing my way downwards till I reached home again.

At the point where I often began the brook makes a sudden turn to the right round the corner of a plantation which dips its boughs into the water. The bank being hollowed out on that side made room for a small hole of from two to three feet deep, overhung by thorns and straggling branches, a favourite haunt of chub. How to get at them without being seen, or how to land one if you did succeed in hooking him, was the difficulty. I often had to give it up as a bad job; but sometimes I had better luck. By getting over the brook and behind the bushes aforesaid I could push my rod over them so as to drop the bait in the water just outside, leaving it to swim if it could right under them, and almost in to the bank, where these retiring fish could not fail to see it. It was ticklish work, for I could only see the float by peering through the tangled boughs and briars which dipped into the water, and if I did see a bite in time and hooked a fish there was the difficulty of getting him out. I had, of course, to get back to the other side before I could do it, and then, if he did not get away in the meantime, it was easy enough to draw him into shallow water, or, if only a small one, to pull him right out. At another time I would pitch my line as high up the stream as I could, and, lying down at full length, let it float back towards me with the current. In this position I could see what the float was about much better; but then the bait would not go so far under the bushes, which was the great thing to aim at. However, I got a few fish at different times out of this little corner. The biggest, I think, was a pound, and a pound chub could give you some trouble under these peculiar circumstances. My bait for chub was invariably the bright yellow caddis worm, to be found sticking at the bottom of bricks or stones which have fallen into the water, generally near a bridge.

The perch did not care so much for these, and a clean little red worm or brandling was what they loved best. Sometimes I tried a minnow, but the perch did not, as a rule, run large enough for that. A little lower down than the hole just mentioned is a larger one, with a willow-tree just bending conveniently over it, behind which you were invisible to the fish. Here one had to exercise some patience, for the hole was a large one, about four feet deep in the middle, and the fish might not see the bait all at once.

But