Izaak Walton lived a while at Winchester, in the declining years of his long and--who can doubt?--tranquil life. He had friends among the bishops and clergy, and wrote the lives of contemporary divines. So he came to Winchester, where a room was kept for him in the Bishop's Palace, and in this city he died on December 15th, 1683. His grave is in the Cathedral, marked by a black marble slab, and within the last few years a memorial statue has been placed in one of the niches of the newly-erected screen. [Illustration: THE AVON AT AMESBURY (_p. 22_).] The ancient hospital of St. Cross is one of the best-known features of the Itchen in the neighbourhood of Winchester, but there are charming country-seats along the whole remaining course--fair homes of English gentlemen, planted above the grass land whence the evening mists of summer rise to shroud the winding stream and far-stretching water-meads, and adorned with smooth-shaven lawns intersected by gravel-walks, winding amidst shrubberies and parterres to the sedgy banks of the silently gliding river. But St. Cross is unique with its gateway tower and porter's hutch, where the wayfarer may even now make the vagrant's claim for dole of beer and bread, the former no longer brewed on the spot, and for its own sake not worth the trouble often taken by sentimental visitors to obtain it. Fine old elms surround the venerable home of the brethren of this cloistered retreat; the river flows close to its foundations; and, facing you across the stream, rises the bold rounded steep surmounted by the clump of beech-trees on St. Catherine's Hill. The speculative builder, however, has long been pushing his outworks towards this breezy eminence where the Wykeham College boys of past generations trooped to their sports. [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL (_p. 22_).]