transparent orange back fin up; then get the hook
out of the red leaves of his gills; then to put
on more bait, and to pull on to another osier
bed. Of all things in the world at a fishing
pic-nic there is no enjoyment so great as cooking
the fish on the river bank.

Get a kettle provided, put in it two parts cold
water and one of white wine, a piece of butter,
some stewed onions and carrots, two cloves, and
a good bunch of sweet herbs; simmer a quarter
of an hour; let it become cold; then prepare
the fish (apart by the river side), and slip them
into the water. When they boil, skim with
the greatest care; when the water boils too
hard, pour in a cup of cold water to check the
extreme ebullition, and let the fish only simmer,
lest the skin break before the flesh
is done to the bone. If your trouts run large
(so wise cooks say), they'll take ten minutes.
If you want to know whether they are done, try
with a knife; if the flesh divide easily from the
bone, ready. The best cookery books advise us
not to let the fish, when done, sodden in the
water, but to lay them on the fish-plate
across the kettle, covered, with a thick cloth.
Serve with anchovy sauce and a squeeze of
lemon. By this dish the caterer will earn a
reputation which he would never have
approached by merely boiling his trout, and he
will find that in after-times his pic-nic and his
cooking will be ever "freshly remembered."

As many fish as St. Anthony preached his
sermon to, crowd round us eager for notice.
There is that ugly but delicious morsel, the
John Dory (Jean Doré). Then, what surpasses
a rosy, flaked, creamy slice out of a thick salmon?
What a consistent fish a turbot is! In what
snowy curls a whiting's flesh comes off the fried
garland in which a good club cook so gracefully
entwines him! If our reader has any
wish to die a royal death, let him go to
Worcester and eat lampreys as they stew them
there in madeira, and served with sippets of
bread and horse-radish. Any reader who
wants to combine a country tour with real
pleasure should go to Gloucestershire, and
spend a day in the Golden valley in the
neighbourhood of Stroud. There in the pebbly
brooks that "make sweet music o'er th'
enamelled stones," under the light green boughs
of beech and ash, he will find a nimble and
artful race of delicious crawfish that in
thunderstorms have a habit of dying and turning
suddenly scarlet as if boiled by the fever of a
sudden fright. Chase the little artful scoundrels
from stone to stone and fill your creel with their
scratching, wriggling, indigo carcasses. Then
tire yourself with a long hearty walk, and return
to boil your prey for supper. Those crawfish
will endear Gloucestershire to you for ever.

Wordsworth obtained his noblest ideas (as
is well known to psychologists), entirely from
his refined diet. He wrote his Ode to
Immortality after a dinner of char from Windermere.
Potted char is one of the most sumptuous of
all potted things. Even the shallow white pot
with the painted char on its sides is appetising.

We must be pardoned after discussing this
royal dish, not to be fully enjoyed away from the
lake scenery, for referring to that savoury but
humble fish, the sprat. How different from
his noble cousin the whitebait, yet how friendly
to man, when served hot and smoking from an
adjacent gridiron! How pretty the little
martyrs look, their silver-foil skins scorched brown
in parts, and branded with ruled lines where
the gridiron has impinged upon them! If it
were not for the extreme pleasure of eating
them, bones and all, we could look at them a
whole day.

Stewing, in our opinion, is the worst way
of cooking fish. Stewing is like potting; it
reduces everything to one dead monotony of taste.
A stew is what its gravy chooses to make it,
and potted fish is whatever its spice is. The
poorer the fish, the richer the sauce. That is
why people take that muddy mass, the Prussian
carp, and soak him in port wine and beef gravy.
He is not worth the trouble or the cost. He
is ungrateful, and will not repay the cook.

   CRÉDIT MOBILIER IN DISCREDIT.

"Qui vivra verra." You have only to
continue in life to see strange things. More than
ten years ago, in Household Words, January 3,
1857, we gave a few utterances respecting that
mysterious monster the Crédit Mobilier, then
juvenile and strong as a giant who needs no
refreshment. It had been founded little more
than five years previously, by a Jew, M. Emile
Pereire, assisted by his brother Isaac. Those
gentlemen possessed small means, beyond a
good education and a clever head. Our
utterances were to the effect that, whatever
confidence other people might have in Crédit
Mobilier, we had no intention of entrusting our
own private fortune to its keeeping. Indeed,
it needed small acumen to perceive that the
purchasers and holders of shares, which had
risen from twenty pounds (with only eight
pounds paid down on them at first) to sixty,
seventy, and eighty pounds per share, were very
like acrobats balancing obelisks of Luxor and
Cleopatra's needles on the tips of their chins.
It was pretty to behold, but much too fine
a sight to last.

Since then, changes have come to pass, some
of which, though episodic, belong to the action
of the tale. We say nothing of the shares
going down to twelve pounds and less, because
that was in the natural course of things.

Most people have heard of M. Mirès, the
great financier, in his splendour when he got a
high-born prince for his son-in-law, and who
afterwards—what a fall was there!—learnt
the effect of four walls on personal liberty.
Unlike the Pereires, Mirès had, probably, no
nore education than he could pick up while
selling sealing-wax sticks in French provincial
towns. Per contra, he had a head and a will,
of which he is still making efficient use.

Three antagonistic Israelite houses have
sufficed, by their perturbing forces, to cause
cataclysms in the financial world. The