has been actually ordained, and has held more than one office in the Church, they savour of blasphemy. In any case, I shall have to take the matter into consideration, with a view to your immediate suspension. But if you wish it I will give you time-a little timeto reflect. I would do anything to avoid a scandal."

The clergyman lifted his hat and stick, with a slight involuntary shrug of the shoulder.

"It is, then, as I expected," he said. "I am to be denounced and unfrocked. The days of persecution are not yet quite over, I perceive."

The Bishop flushed angrily.

"It is absurd to talk of persecution in such a case, Mr. Bradley. Do you yourself conceive it possible that you, bearing such opinions, can remain in the Church?"

"I do not conceive it possible. Shall I resign at once?"

"Permit me to think it over, and perhaps to consult with those who in such matters are wiser than myself. I shall do nothing hasty, or harsher than the occasion warrants, be sure of that."

"Thank you," returned Bradley with a peculiar smile.

"You shall hear from me. In the mean time, let me entreat you to be careful. Good morning."

And with a cold bow, the Bishop dismissed his visitor.

On leaving the episcopal residence Bradley went straight to the railway station, had a slight and hasty lunch at the buffet, and then took the mid-day express to London. Entering a second-class carriage, the only other occupants of which were a burly personage going up for a Cattle Show, and a spruce individual with “bagman ten on every lineament of his countenance, he resigned himself to reflections on his peculiar position.

" writ

Throughout these reflections I have no intention of following him, but they seemed less gloomy and miserable than might be conceived possible under the circumstances. His eye was clear and determined, his mouth set firmly, and now and then he smiled sadly to himself— just as he had smiled in the presence of the Bishop.

The express reached London in about six hours, so that it was evening when Bradley arrived at King's Cross, carrying with him only a small hand-bag. Instead of hailing a cab, he walked right on along the streets-through Taviton Street to Russell Square, thence into Holborn, and thence, across Lincoln's Inn Fields, into the Strand. He then turned off towards the Temple, which he entered with the air of one who knew its quiet recesses well.

He was turning into Pump Court when he suddenly came face to face with a man of about thirty, elegantly dressed, with faultless gloves and boots, and carrying a light cane. He was very fresh and faircomplexioned, with sandy whiskers and moustaches; and to complete his rather dandified appearance he sported an eyeglass.

"Cholmondeley!" cried the clergyman, pronouncing it "Chumley" according to the approven mode.

"Ambrose Bradley!" returned the other. "Is it possible? Why, I thought you were hundreds of miles away."

"I came up here by the express, and was just coming to see you.” "Then come along with me and dine at the 'Reform.""

They looked a strange contrast as they walked on side by side— the powerful, grave-looking man, shabbily attired in his semi-clerical dress, and the elegant exquisite attired in the height of London fashion, with his mild blue eye and his eyeglass in position. Yet John Cholmondeley was something more than the merely ornamental young person he appeared; and as for his mildness, who that had read his savage articles on foreign politics in the Bi-monthly Review would have taken him for a harmless person? He was a Radical of Radicals, an M.A. of Oxford, and the acting-editor of the Charing Cross Chronicle. His literary style was hysterical and almost feminine in its ferocity. Personally he was an elegant young man, with a taste for good wines and good cigars, and a tendency in external matters to follow the prevailing fashion.

They drove to the Reform' in a hansom, and dined together. At the table adjoining theirs on one side two cabinet ministers were seated in company with Jack Bustle, of the Chimes, and Sir Topaz Cromwell, the young general just returned from South Africa; at the table on the other side an Under-Secretary of State was giving a little feast to Joseph Moody, the miners' agent and delegate, who had been a miner himself, and who was just then making some stir in political circles by his propaganda.

After dinner they adjourned to the smoking-room, which they found almost empty; and then, in a few eager sentences, Bradley explained his position and solicited his friend's advice. For that advice was well worth having, Cholmondeley being not only a clever thinker but a shrewd man of the world.

(To be continued.)

F

LOCH-FISHING.

ISHING, like shooting, possesses a multitude of secondary pleasures, owing to the constant change of scene which it involves. Of course, we do not speak of roach-fishing in the Lea, or gudgeon-fishing, that delight of sedentary cockneys, from a Thames punt; any more than we are thinking of firing upon terrified bluerocks at Hurlingham, before bright eyes, whose possessors straightway go home and sign petitions against vivisection. But Mr. Ruskin and the Archbishop of York have spoken plainly enough upon this style of shooting. The higher and more sportsmanlike pleasures, both of shooting and fishing, can only be enjoyed with much hard work and healthy exercise, amid grand or tranquillising scenes. A day's shooting with the friend of your heart, over the yellow stubbles of Norfolk, meets this requirement as well as a ramble in mid-August over miles of heather, terminating in blue hazy mountains with distant peeps of a bluer sea. In both, Nature with her benign calm soothes the mind musing upon many things, while cares are exorcised by the spells of free action amid beautiful scenery. Hence the delights of these two sports, fishing and shooting, are perennial. Happy the parent who has indoctrinated his boys with either taste; still better if the lad can satisfy his longings with both. Lawn tennis, in spite of its respectable ancestry and the favour in which it is held at present, may perish in a year or two as utterly as badminton or croquet have died out. Archery manages to preserve a semblance of vitality, unsuited though it be as a recreation to our fickle climate. Cricket and football, as the sports of summer and winter respectively, will always hold their own and charm their many athletic votaries. But shooting and fishing, it may safely be predicted, will be passionately pursued by Englishmen so long as any quarry remains for them to pursue on earth, or in sky and water. They give change of scene, exercise, and recreation at once. They afford the requisite activity of mind which prevents a man who indulges in them from deeming himself lazy. They help him, with Horace, to banish the black brood of cares in mare Creticum, or into any other sea which may be more convenient. They are ever with us, like Cicero's liberal studies, in

our day as well as our nightly dreams. They charm youth, soothe manhood, and are not too severe for old age. However pent up in cities and business a man may be, they bring him into close relations with nature; and as Antæus gained fresh strength every time that he touched the ground, they send him back to work in the crowded city with nerves braced and spirits invigorated, cheery, contented, thankful.

It is not our purpose to compare the respective delights of shooting and fishing. Suffice it to say that both are entrancing, because they bring us face to face with nature. It is our intention rather to dwell upon one particular branch of the latter amusement, loch-fishing, to recall a few of its pleasures, and awake a sympathetic glow in those readers who have shared them. If a nineteenthcentury Xerxes were to offer a reward for a new pleasure, he might well be directed, as we hope to show, to the charms of loch-fishing. While admitting the element of chance as freely as does river-fishing, it does not demand so much hard work and activity as the latter sport. Hence loch-fishing is emphatically the amusement to be recommended to an aged man, or to one jaded with hard bodily or mental work. No other sport seems to us at once so soothing and so fraught with a gentle excitement. All care about the certainty and steadiness of the feet is at once put out of mind in a boat; and frequently in fishing a rocky stream, or threading the precarious path by a swampy one, not a little decision and trust in nerves as well as in strength of ankles is requisite, to say nothing of the general tone of bodily health implied in the ability to take a long summer day's ramble by a devious stream. An attentive and skilled boatman takes all trouble off the fisherman's shoulders, and enables him, snugly ensconced in the stern, to devote his whole mind to the delightful business which is so dear to a fisherman's heart. In this position too, while the gillie rows him before beautiful scenery and snatches of sublime grouping among rocks which change every moment as fresh shoulders of the mountains or new corries open out, while frequent waves of light and colour pass over the face of the hills and sweep down to the little patches of oats and groups of Scotch firs at their base, the mind is eminently receptive. Perhaps it should rather be said that a man's whole nature then expands to receive the manifold glories of water, rock and sky, the many influences of wild sights and sounds, the grateful breeze, the floods of sunshine, even the sudden storm of rattling hail or large-dropped shower which one moment descends upon the boat, to be transfigured next minute into a speedy change of fuller,

warmer sunlight. All the latent poetry and artistry of a man's composition then awake. The better qualities of the heart resume their rightful sway where emulation, love of money if not mean avarice, party spirit, the rancour and uncharitableness engendered by public life, were lately predominant. The angler now understands how Hercules cleansed the Augean stables by an abundant flow of water, and appreciates the allegory in his own case. Perhaps the rod falls upon the thwarts, and he indulges in the pleasures of memory, or is transported to the purity and singleness of aim which actuated his youth. Perhaps his day-dream gives place to a veritable forty winks under the monotonous thud of the oars in their rowlocks. Donald knows how to respect privacy as well as how to tell a good story or kindle the flagging enthusiasm of his master, by marvellous stories of trout and salmon which he helped to kill. A fortnight of such diversion in a constant air-bath of the freshest atmospheric constituents literally recreates a man. Credas

experto.

Loch-fishing is of many kinds, each of which possesses its own devotees. A humble and yet a pleasant branch of it consists in taking perch from a boat with a worm and a float. In some lakes, as at Slapton Lea, at Bala, and, we believe, in Ellesmere, this fish abounds. As most boys know, it is a "bold-biting fool;" and Izaak Walton says "if there be twenty or forty in a hole, they may be at one standing all catched one after another; they being like the wicked of this world, not afraid though their fellows and companions perish in their sight." Very little excitement attends this form of lochfishing; the sportsman taking his ease in the stern sheets of the boat while his hook is baited for him. This he drops in, and if fortunate in his choice of locality may then take out one after another almost as many of the fish as he chooses. Unfortunately perch generally run much of one size and that not more than half a pound, although every now and then larger specimens even up to 4 lbs. may be

As a general rule, however, these are taken with a minnow. The sport becomes monotonous after a little, especially to those who delight in some form of bodily activity, however little may be the exertion called into play. Still, there are worse amusements than a day's perch-fishing. It is eminently a family pleasure; boys, girls, and ladies can all join in it, provided that the attendant be sufficiently quick to bait all the hooks at once, and sufficiently patient to take good-humouredly every form of impatience from his young charges. A book can be taken also, and when tired of pulling out perch may be produced, and in fine air, before a lovely pastoral view, when the