"Fish! I should think so!" says a man who has fishings to let. "Why, there are times in the year when you could take salmon out by the armful." To the remark that this is not the time when salmon ought to be taken, he replies that there are good trout at any time of the year; and a very cursory observation of the Tees proves this to be true. The keen observation of Sir Walter Scott led him to remark on the blackness of this river. Coming down from the moorlands, it is thickly stained by the peat; but the peaty colour does not in fact obscure the clearness of the water, and looking down from above, one may everywhere see the fish shooting athwart the stream in little shoals. The river is exceedingly well preserved; indeed, on one side it is in the hands of the Duke of Cleveland, on the other it is well tended by Mr. Morritt of Rokeby, the Earl of Strathmore, and Sir Talbot Constable. Nevertheless, fishing is to be had on easy terms--from Henry Ludgate, of Winston, for example, who was formerly gamekeeper to the Earl of Brownlow, and who now keeps a public-house and writes verses. His political ideas take that turn, he observes, and the visitor to Henry's hostelry may hear some of the verses repeated if he should be so minded as to listen to them. There are no towns on the Tees until one of the most horrible in all England is reached--Stockton, to wit; but there are innumerable villages. Some of these are quite remarkable for their cleanliness and beauty. Romaldkirk, the second village from Middleton, on the Yorkshire side, is an incomparable village, far scattered, but bound together by a plenitude of trees. Romaldkirk--anciently "Rum auld kirk," a serious-minded old villager observed, with a trenchant faith in his etymology--is noticeable not only for its combination of all the charms that an English village can possess, but also on account of its parish church and its parish stocks. The stocks are unique, indeed. Shackles of this ancient description are usually of wood; but the stocks at Romaldkirk are bars of iron, fastened in stone posts, and ingeniously bent so that one of the bars, locked down on the other, will imprison two pairs of feet. In winter the parish stocks of Romaldkirk must have been the most uncomfortable parish stocks in all England. The villagers preserve them now with genuine and reasonable pride, and the oldest inhabitant sits upon them and relates sad stories of the last persons who were imprisoned therein. The church has been so little restored that it remains one of the finest examples of early ecclesiastical architecture. It is unusually large for so small a village, a fact which is explained by its erection by the Barons Fitzhugh, who were buried here whenever they chanced to die in their beds. The building dates from the twelfth century, and is in the Early English style. One of the Lords Fitzhugh is kept in remembrance by a statue in chain-armour, still contemplated by the villagers with a mixture of awe