Jouant du luth et quasi Au calme clair de lune triste et beau marbres. thereof must have had but little enjoyment of them. There they go in their big coaches, among the immense bows and curtsies of the ladies and gentlemen and dapper ecclesiastics whom they meet; princes in feathers and laces, and cardinals in silk and ermine. But the delightful gardens on which they are being complimented are meanwhile mere dreadful little plantations, like a nurseryman's squares of cabbages, you would think, rather than And this leads me to wonder what groves of ilexes and cypresses; for, these gardens must be when the key alas, the greatest princes, the most has turned in their rusty gates, and the magnificent cardinals, cannot bribe doorkeeper gone to sleep under the time, or hustle him to hurry up. gun hanging from its nail. What must And thus the gardens were planted such places be, Mondragone, for inand grew. For whom? Certainly not stance, near Frascati, and the deserted for the men of those days, who would Villa Pucci near Signa, during the doubtless have been merely shocked great May nights, when my own small could they have seen or foreseen. For scrap of garden, not beyond kitchen their ghosts perhaps? Scarcely. A sounds and servants' lamps, is made friend of mine, in whose information wonderful and magical by the scents on such matters I have implicit belief, assures me that it is not the whole ghosts of the ladies and cavaliers of long ago who haunt the gardens; not the ghost of their every-day, humdrum likeness to ourselves, but the ghost of certain moments of their existence, certain rustlings, and shimmerings of their personality; their waywardness, momentary transcendent graces and graciousness, unaccountable wistfulness and sorrow; certain looks of the face and certain tones of the voice (perhaps none of the steadiest); things that seemed to die away into nothing on earth, but which have permeated their old haunts, clung to the statues with the ivy, risen and fallen with the plash of the fountains, and which now exhale in the breath of the honeysuckle and murmur in the voice of the birds, in the rustle of the leaves and the high, invading grasses. There are some verses of Verlaine's, which come to me always, on the melancholy minuet tune to which Monsieur Fauré has set them, as I walk in those Italian gardens, Roman and Florentine, walk in the spirit as well as in the flesh : which rise up, by the song of the nightingales, the dances of the fireflies, copying in the darkness below the figures which are footed by the nimble stars above? Into such rites as these, which the poetry of the past practises with the poetry of summer nights, one durst not penetrate, save after leaving one's vulgar flesh, one's habits, one's realities outside the gate. And since I have mentioned gates, I must not forget one other sort of old Italian garden, perhaps the most poetical and pathetic- the garden that has ceased to exist. You meet it along every Italian highroad or country lane : a piece of field, tender green with the short wheat in winter, brown and orange with the dried maize husks and seeding sorghum in summer, the wide grass path still telling of coaches that once rolled in, a big stone bench, with sweeping, shell-like back, under the rosemary bushes; and, facing the road, between solemnly grouped cypresses or stately marshalled poplars, a gate of charming ironwork, standing open between its scroll-work masonry and empty vases, under its coronetted escutcheon. The gate that leads to Votre âme est un paysage choisi masques VERNON LEE. From The Nineteenth Century. "Dalmunach" on the Laggan water, a pool that is the rival of " Dellagyl " NONE of the greater rivers of Scot- and the "Holly Bush" for the proud land makes so much haste to reach the title of the best pool of lower Spey. ocean as does the turbulent and impa- My first salmon I brought to the gaff tient Spey. From its parent locklet in with a beating heart in that fine swift the bosom of the Grampians, it speeds stretch of water, known as "The Dip," through Badenoch, the country of which connects the pools of the Cluny MacPherson, the chief of Clan" Heathery Isle" and the "Red Chattan, a region to this day redolent Craig," and which is now leased by of memories of the '45. It abates its that good fisherman, Mr. Justice hurry as its current skirts the grave of North. I think the Dundurcas water the beautiful Jean Maxwell, Duchess then belonged to the late Mr. Little of Gordon, who raised the 92nd Highlanders by giving a kiss with the king's shilling to every recruit, and who now since many long years Gilmour, the well-known welter-weight who went so well to hounds season after season from Melton Mowbray, and who was as keen in the water on Spey as he was over the Leicestershire Sleeps beneath Kinrara's willow. pastures. A servant of Mr. Little GilBut after this salaam of courtesy the mour was drowned in the "Two river roars and bickers down the long Stones" pool, the next below the stretch of shaggy glen which inter-" Holly Bush ;" and the next pool bevenes between the upper and lower low the "Two Stones" is called the Rocks of Craigellachie, whence the "Beaufort " to this day-named after Clan Grant, whose habitation is this the present duke, who took many a big ruggedly beautiful strath, takes its fish out of it in the days when he used slogan of "Stand fast, Craigellachie," to come to Speyside with his friend, till it finally sends its headlong torrent Mr. Little Gilmour. shooting miles out through the salt In those long gone-by days brave old water of the Moray Firth. In its Lord Saltoun, the hero of Hougomont, course of over a hundred miles its resided during the fishing season in the fierce current has seldom tarried; yet mansion-house of Auchinroath, on the now and again it spreads panting into high ground at the mouth of the Glen a long, smooth stretch of still water, of Rothes. One morning, some fivewhen wearied momentarily with buffet-and-forty years ago, my father drove to ing the boulders in its broken and con- breakfast with the old lord, and took torted bed; or when a great rock, me with him. Not caring to send the jutting out into its course, causes a horse to the stable, he left me outside deep, black, sullen pool whose sluggish in the dogcart when he entered the eddy is crested with masses of yellow house. As I waited rather sulkilyfoam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a fisherman extends over the five-and-twenty miles of its lower course, from the confluence of the pellucid Avon at Ballindalloch to the bridge of Fochabers, the native village of the Captain Wilson who died so gallantly in the recent fighting in Matabeleland My first Spey trout I took out of water at the foot of the cherry orchard below the sweet-lying cottage of Delfur. My first grilse I hooked and played with trout tackle in for I was very hungry—there came out on to the doorstep a very queerlooking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short, stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a whole-colored suit of grey; a droll-shaped jacket, the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and myself belonged, I answered him of muscular strength. Before he had somewhat shortly, and then ingenuously suggested that he would be doing me a kindly act if he would go and fetch me out a hunk of bread and meat, for I was enduring tortures of hunger. been in the water twenty minutes, the old lord was in a fish; his gillie, old Dallas, who could throw a fine line in spite of the whiskey, gaffed it scientifically, and I was sent home rejoicing Then he swore, and that with vigor with a fifteen-pound salmon for my and fluency, that it was a shame that I mother, and a half-sovereign for myshould have been left outside; called a self wherewith to buy a trouting rod groom, and bade me alight and come and reel. Lord Saltoun was the first indoors with him. I demurred - I had lord I ever met, and I have never got the paternal injunction to remain known one since whom I have liked with the horse and cart. "I am mas-half so well. ter here!" exclaimed the old person Spey is a river which insists on being impetuously; and with further strong distinctive. She mistrusts the stranger. language he expressed his intention of He may be a good man on Tweed or rating my father soundly for not hav- Tay, but until he has been formally ing brought me inside along with him- introduced to Spey and been admitted self. Then a question occurred to me, to her acquaintance, she is chary in and I ventured to ask, "Are you Lord according him her favors. She is no Saltoun ?" "Of course I am," re- flighty coquette, nor is she a prude; plied the old gentleman; "who the but she has her demure reserves, and devil else should I be ?" Well, I did he who would stand well with her not like to avow what I felt, but in must ever treat her with consideration truth I was hugely disappointed in and respect. She is not as those facile him; for I had just been reading Si- demi-mondaine streams, such as the borne's "Waterloo," and to think that Helmsdale or the Conon, which let this dumpy old fellow in the duffel themselves be entreated successfully by jacket that came up over his ears was the chance comer on the first jaunty the valiant hero who had held Hougo- appeal. You must learn the ways of mont through cannon fire and musketry Spey before you can prevail with her, fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting and her ways are not the ways of other on the day of Waterloo, while the post rivers. It was in vain that the veteran he was defending was ablaze, and who chief of southern fishermen, the late had actually killed Frenchmen with his Francis Francis, threw his line over own good sword, was a severe disen- Spey in the veni, vidi, vici manner of chantment. When I had breakfasted, one who had made Usk and Wye his he asked leave of my father to let me potsherd, and who over the Hampshire go with him to the waterside, promis- Avon had cast his shoe. Russel, the ing to send me home safely later in the famous editor of the Scotsman, the Deday. When he was in Spey up to the lane of the north country, who, pen armpits for the "Holly Bush" takes in hand, could make a lord advocate deep wading from the Dundurcas side squirm, and before whose gibe provosts the old lord looked even droller than and bailies trembled, who had drawn he had done on the Auchinroath door-out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, step, and I could not reconcile him in and before whom the big fish of Forth the least to my Hougomont ideal. He could not stand even he, brilliant was delighted when I opened on him fisherman as he was, could " come nae with that topic, and he told me with speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arngreat spirit of the vehemence with dilly water-gillie quaintly worded it. which his brother-officer, Colonel Macdonnell, and his men fetched the French out of Hougomont courtyard, and how big Sergeant Graham closed the door against them by main force Yet Russel of the Scotsman was, perhaps, the most whole-souled salmonfisher of his own or any other period. His piscatorial aspirations extended beyond the grave. Who that heard it can ever forget the peroration, slightly easy style and the masterful style. profane perhaps, but entirely enthusi- The disciples of the easy style throw a astic, of his speech on salmon fishing fairly long line, but their aim is not to at a Tweedside dinner? "When I cover a maximum distance. What they die," he exclaimed in a fine rapture, pride themselves on is precise, dexter"should I go to heaven, I will fish in ous, and, above all, light and smooth the water of life with a fly dressed with casting. No fierce switchings of the a feather from the wing of an angel; rod reveal their approach before they should I be unfortunately consigned to are in sight; like the clergyman of another destination, I shall neverthe- Pollok's "Course of Time," they love less hope to angle in Styx with the to draw rather than to drive. Of the worm that never dieth." To his edito- masterful style the most brilliant exporial successor Spey was a trifle more nent is a short man, but he is the gracious than she had been to Russel; deepest wader in Spey. I believe his but she did not wholly open her heart waders fasten, not round his waist, but to this neophyte of her stream, serving round his neck. I have seen him in a him up in the pool of Dellagyl with the pool, far beyond his depth, but "treadugliest, blackest, gauntest old cock-ing water" while simultaneously wieldsalmon of her depths, owning a snout ing a rod about four times the length like the prow of an ancient galley. of himself, and sending his line whizzing an extraordinary distance. The resolution of his attack seems actually to hypnotize salmon into taking his fly; and, once hooked, however hard they may fight for life, they are doomed fish. We Spey exacts from those who would fish her waters with success a peculiar and distinctive method of throwing their line, which is known as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the Ah me! These be gaudy, flaunting, "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of flashy days! Our sober Spey, in the the admirable Badminton series. It matter of salmon fly-hooks, is gradually cannot be learned by diagrams; no yielding to the garish influence of the man, indeed, can become a proficient in times. Spey salmon now begin to allow it who has not grown up from child-themselves to be captured by such inhood in the practice of it. Yet its decorous and revolutionary fly-hooks as use is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this - that his line must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate a phase, at once beautiful and practical, of the poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside, quorum ego parva pars fui, there are two distinct manners, which may be severally distinguished as the the "Canary" and the "Silver Doctor." Jaunty men, in loud suits of dittoes, have come into the north country, and display fly-books that vie, in the variegated brilliancy of their contents, with a Dutch tulip bed. staunch adherents to the traditional Spey blacks and browns, we who have bred Spey cocks for the sake of their feathers, and have sworn through good report and through evil report by the pig's down or Berlin wool for body, the Spey cock for hackle, and the mallard drake for wings, have jeered at the kaleidoscopic fantasticality of the leaves of their fly-books turned over by adventurers from the south country and Ireland, and have laughed at the notion that a self-respecting Spey salmon would so far demoralize himself as to be allured by a miniature presentation of Liberty's shop-window. But the salmon has not regarded the matter 66 from our conservative point of view; curious assortment of feathers from the and now we, too, ruefully resort to the Himalayas; Mr. Grant sent far and 99 canary as a dropper when condi- wide for further supplies of suitable tions of atmosphere and water seem and distinctive material, and then he to favor that gaudy implement. And devoted himself to the task of dressing it must be owned that even before hundred after hundred of fly-hooks of the "twopence-colored" gentry came every known pattern and of every size, among us from distant parts, we, the from the great three-inch hook for natives, had been side-tracking from heavy spring water to the dainty little the exclusive use of the old-fashioned" finnock" hook, scarcely larger than sombre flies into the occasional use of a trout fly. A suitable receptacle was gayer yet still modest "fancies." Of constructed for this collection from the specific Spey hooks in favor at the timber of the "Auld Gean Tree of present time the following is, perhaps, Elchies" the largest of its kind in all a fairly correct and comprehensive list: Scotland whose trunk had a diameter purple king, green king, black king, of nearly four feet, and whose branches silver heron, gold heron, black dog, had a spread of over twenty yards. silver raich, gold raich, black heron, The "Auld Gean Tree" fell into its silver green, gold green, Lady Caroline, dotage, and was cut down to the strains carron, black fancy, silver spale, gold of a "lament," with which the wail spale, culdrain, dallas, silver thumbie, and skirl of the bagpipes drowned the Sebastopol, Lady Florence March, gold noise of the woodmen's axes. Out of purpie, and gled (deadly in "snaw- the wood of the "Auld Gean Tree" a bree"). The Spey cock -a cross be- local artificer constructed a handsome tween the Hamburg cock and the old cabinet with many drawers, in which Scottish mottled hen-was, fifty years were stored the Elchies collection of ago, bred all along Speyside expressly fly-hooks, classified carefully according for its feathers, used in dressing salmon to their sizes and kinds. The cabinet flies; but the breed is all but extinct stood and, I suppose, still stands now, or rather, perhaps, has been in the Elchies billiard-room; but I fear crossed and re-crossed out of recogni- the collection is sadly diminished, for tion. It is said, however, to be still Henry Grant was the freest-handed of maintained in the parish of Advie, and men, and towards the end of his life when the late Mr. Bass had the Tulchan anybody who chose was welcome to shootings and fishings, his head keeper help himself from the contents of the used to breed and sell Spey cocks. drawers. Yet no doubt some relics of this fine collection must still remain ; and I hope, for his own sake, that Mr. Justice A. L. Smith, the present tenant of Elchies, is free of poor Henry's cabinet. Probably the most extensive collection of salmon fly-hooks ever made was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a distinguished Indian civil servant, and of later fame as an astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving life in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into the estate, he set himself to build up a representative collection of salmon flies for all waters and all seasons. His father had brought home a large and It is a popular delusion that Speyside men are immortal; this is true only of distillers. But it is a fact that their longevity is phenomenal. If Dr. Ogle had to make up the population returns of Strath-Spey, he could not fail to be profoundly astonished by the comparative blankness of the mortality columns. Frederick the Great, when his fellows were rather hanging back in the crisis of a battle, stung them with the biting taunt, "Do you wish to live forever?" If his descendants of the present day were to address the same |