listless a pastime to interest him much, for he often fell into a doze by the water side, and sometimes let his rod drop into the stream. His poetical but strictly accurate account of Earlham is worth quoting: "At some distance from the city, behind a range of hilly ground which rises towards the south-west, is a small river, the waters of which, after many meanderings, eventually enter the principal river of the district, and assist to swell the tide which it rolls down to the ocean. It is a sweet rivulet, and pleasant it is to trace its course from its spring-head, high up in the remote regions of East Anglia, till it arrives in the valley behind yon rising ground; and pleasant is that valley, truly a goodly spot, but most lovely where yonder bridge crosses the little stream. Beneath its arch the waters rush garrulously into a blue pool, and are there stilled for a time, for the pool is deep, and they appear to have sunk to sleep. Farther on, however, you hear their voice again, where they ripple gaily over yon gravelly shallow. On the left, the hill slopes gently down to the margin of the stream. On the right is a green level, a smiling meadow, grass of the richest decks the side of the slope; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the nearest of which, when the sun is nigh at its meridian, fling a broad shadow upon the face of the pool; through yon vista you catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It has a stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it is, among those umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earl's home, in the days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming in quest of a hearthstead, settled down in the gray old time, when Thor and Freya were yet gods, and Odin was a portentous name. Yon old hall is still called the Earl's Home." It was while fishing in "a sweet rivulet" in the grounds of the old hall one summer's day that "a voice, clear and sonorous as a bell," asked, "Canst thou answer to thy conscience for pulling all those fish out of the water, and leaving them to gasp in the sun?" The speaker was none other than the learned Friend, Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), who as a young man read nearly all the Old Testament in Hebrew in the early morning. It was natural, therefore, that he should ask the young angler if he knew Hebrew, having confessed, according to "Lavengro," that he himself could not read Dante. This is clearly wrong, for writing to Thomas Fowell Buxton, in 1808, he mentions that he is reading Sophocles, some Italian, Livy, etc., and in the following year he informs his sister, Hannah Buxton, that he is engaged, _inter alia_, on Apollonius Rhodius, the Greek Testament, and Ariosto.