were still a distinct and recognised class, though less boisterous and ungovernable than they had been-may therefore flit before our eyes the next time we go into that region of butchers' shops; but it is in Fleet-street, No. 3 from Chancery-lane, that we get our first distinct view of the genial fisherman. He did not publish his "Angler" there, nor any of his works; yet with the hosiery or Hamburgh trade, we doubt not, he associated, when a young man, not only his love for the rod and line, but an inkling after old books. He not only visited Mr. Margrave, who dwelt among the booksellers in St. Paul's churchyard-and Mr. John Stubbs, near to the "Swan," in Golden-lane, to purchase tackle—and went out on fine May mornings for a fishing excursion in the neighbourhood of Ware-and snatched a few hours on a summer day to throw in a line from London Bridge for the "leather-mouthed" roach, which, he says, were there "the largest and fattest in this nation,"but he sat down many a long winter night, with his wife Rachael, conning black-letter volumes of history, divinity, and poetry. And we may well fancy that though none of his own works issued from the press while he lived in Fleet-street, there were in that old house growing up within him, some of the curious thoughts he expressed in his "Angler," for the book is an image of himselfjust a revelation of the man Walton-as his brother-in-law Robert Floud, a frequent visitant no doubt at Fleet-street, used afterwards to tell him : "This book is so like you, and you like it, For harmless mirth, expression, art, and wit, I love this mirth, art, wit, the book and you." Most probably, too, in this very house he began to collect materials for his charming "Life of Master Richard Hooker;" since George Cranmer, his wife's uncle, with whom, at the time we refer to, Walton must have been on intimate terms, had been one of Hooker's pupils. It requires no great stretch of imagination to see and overhear Walton and Cranmer talking about old times; the latter telling the former of the great divine, his manner of life, his learning and meekness, his devotion and charity; and the former putting down, from the lips of the latter, in the thick cramped hand-writing with which his autographs have made us familiar, facts and observations which became the germ of this invaluable piece of biography. We are also within a few paces of another dwelling, in which the author and angler domiciled. Ten years after he came to Fleet-street, he went to live a few doors up Chancery-lane; there two sons were born, and his poor wife died, in 1640, after giving birth to an infant daughter. The same year Walton published his "Life of Dr. Donne," prefixed to the sermons of that eloquent divine. He also is one of the genii loci belonging to the region, and his shadow meets us in company with his illustrious parishioner, for he was vicar of the parish of St. Dunstan, to which the house we have noticed belongs. We can see the vicar, with cropped hair, open forehead, arched eyebrows, full eyes, handsome nose and lips, thick moustache, peaked beard, and high ruffed collar, sitting in the brown oak parlour of his friend; and then we go with Walton to the church of St. Dunstan, when Donne preached from the text, "To God the Lord belong the issues of death." "Many that then saw his tears," says Walton, "and heard his faint and hollow voice, professed they thought the text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preached his own funeral sermon." The good man was well fit to die, for Walton tells us he said: "Though of myself I have nothing to present to him but sin and misery, yet I know he looks not upon me now as I am of myself, but as I am in my Saviour, and hath given me even at this present time some testimonies by his Holy Spirit that I am of the number of the elect; I am therefore full of inexpressible joy, and shall die in peace." In anticipation of his death, the worthy divine did an odd thing with a pious intent, which had in it a dash of quaintness rather peculiar even in that quaint age. "A monument being resolved on," Walton tells us, "Dr. Donne sent for a carver to make him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it, and to bring with it a board of the just height of his body. These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got, to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth : Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed, as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned inside as might show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned toward the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour, Jesus. In this posture he was drawn at his just height, and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor, Dr. Henry King, then chief residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that church." This strange sort of monument is preserved, with other relics of old St. Paul's, in the crypt of the present cathedral. Just after the picture was drawn as above described, Donne "sent for several of his most considerable friends, of whom he took a solemn and deliberate farewell, commending to their considerations some sentences useful for the regulation of their lives, and then dismissed them, as good Jacob did his sons, with a spiritual benedic |