as hard to extirpate as the perch, would be quite at home in these
sluggish pools under the lily-pads, and would harmonize admirably with
the eel in the pies and other gross preparations which delight the
British palate. He hath, moreover, a John Bull-like air in his
broad and burly shape, his smooth and unscaly superficies and the
_noli-me-tangere_ character of his dorsal fin. Pity he was unknown to
Izaak Walton!

At this particular point the piscatory effect is intensified by the
dam just above Hampton Bridge. Two parts of a river are especially
fine for fishing. One is the part above the dam, and the other the
part below. These two divisions may be said, indeed, in a large sense
to cover all the Thames. Moulsey Lock, while favorable to fish and
fishermen, is unfavorable to dry land. Yet there is said to be no
malaria. Hampton Court has proved a wholesome residence to every
occupant save its founder.

[Illustration: WOLSEY'S TOWER, ESHER.]

The angler's capital is Thames Ditton, and his capitol the Swan Inn.
Ditton is, like many other pretty English villages, little and old. It
is mentioned in _Domesday Boke_ as belonging to the bishop of Bayeux
in Normandy, famous for the historic piece of tapestry. Wadard,
a gentleman with a Saxon name, held it of him, probably for the
quit--rent of an annual eel-pie, although the consideration is not
stated. The clergy were, by reason of their frequent meagre days and
seasons, great consumers of fish. The phosphorescent character of that
diet may have contributed, if we accept certain modern theories of
animal chemistry as connected in some as yet unexplained way with
psychology, to the intellectual predominance of that class of the
population in the Middle Ages. That occasional fasting, whether
voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and
altogether the reverse of systematic in Grub street, helps to clear
the wits, with or without the aid of phosphorus, is a fixed fact. The
stomach is apt to be a stumbling-block to the brain. We are not prone
to associate prolonged and productive mental effort with a fair round
belly with fat capon lined. It was not the jolly clerics we read of
in song, but the lean ascetic brethren who were numerous enough to
balance them, that garnered for us the treasures of ancient literature
and kept the mind of Christendom alive, if only in a state of
suspended animation. It was something that they prevented the mace of
chivalry fro