Tweed trout care a pin about you, unless you had a very uncommon appearance indeed, and were something truly terrific.

From another maxim, it would appear that the fish in some rivers about London lead a life of perpetual unhappiness and anxiety. "Do not imagine that because a fish does not instantly dart off on first seeing you, he is the less aware of your presence; he almost always on such occasions ceases to feed, and pays you the compliment of devoting his whole attention to you, whilst he is preparing for a start whenever the apprehended danger becomes sufficiently imminent.” This lively maxim gives us melancholy insight into most English angling. We see clear, still water, and at the bottom a trout. He is "alone in his glory," and the glutton is at dinner on what-it is not said; but probably on slugs. All the while he is nuzzling in the mud, his mind is abstracted by being, in self-defence, under the necessity of keeping an eye on the "gentleman in black;" and both parties-he who is always over head and ears in water, and he who is but occasionally so are attempting to take every advantage of each other, by means of a system of mutual espionage, which ought not to be tolerated in a free country. How any fish, liable at all times of the day, in anything like fine weather, to such unprovoked persecution, can get fat, surpasses our comprehension, and would seem to argue much obtuseness of feeling; but we find that his perceptive, emotive, and locomotive powers, are all of the highest order; and that his perspicacity in seeing danger, and his alacrity in escaping it, are such as, on the principles of the inductive philosophy, could only have been acquired by a perpetual course of such active exercise as must, in the ordinary course of nature, have kept him in a state of lankness, equal to that of Pharaoh's lean kine, or Mr Elwes's greyhounds.

66

If," says our excellent "Bungler," "during your walks by the river-side, you have remarked any good fish, it is fair to presume that other persons have marked them also; suppose the case of two well-known fish, one of them (which I will call A), lying above a certain bridge, the other (which I will call B), lying below the bridge; suppose farther, that you have just caught B, and that some curious and cunning friend in a careless way, say to you, 'Where did you take that fine fish?' A finished fisherman would advise you to tell

should

your inquiring friend that you had taken your fish just above the bridge, describing, as the scene of action, the spot which, in truth, you knew to be still occupied by the other fish A. Your friend would then fish no more for A, supposing that to be the fish which you have caught; and whilst he innocently resumes his operations below the bridge, where he falsely imagines B still to be, A is left quietly for you, if you can catch him."

Here the whole meanness, wretchedness, misery, wickedness, vice, guilt, and sin of the system are brought out in one maxim. Hiring a spy to show you a fish at his dinner, that you may steal upon him in shadow and murder him at his maggot, by luring him to prey on poisoned food, is conduct that admits only of this extenuation, that the fish is himself such a suspicious and dangerous character, that ten to one he contrives not merely to elude your piscicidal arts, but to outwit you at your own game, by homicidally causing you by a false step to get yourself drowned in the river;—but to murder one out of two well-known fish (videlicet B, him who used to lie below the bridge), and then, that nobody but yourself shall murder the remaining half-brace of the two well-known fish (videlicet A, him who is still lying above the bridge), to play to your friend the part, not only of a finished fisherman, but of a finished liar-exhibits, we must say, to our uncorrupted mind, such a picture of complicated villany, that we do not hesitate for a moment indignantly to declare, that the fiend in human shape, who could not only perpetrate such enormities, but instigate and instruct the angling youth of England to imitate, and perhaps surpass them (no-that is impossible in nature), deserves-if not no longer to be permitted to exist on the surface of our globe-certainly to be cut off, by ban of excommunication, from Fire and Water.

Yet is the ineffable enormity of the sin sunk in the inconceivable silliness of the system. Two well-known fish! One above and the other below the bridge, and all the angling vicinage occupied during a whole season in attempting to entrap the two first capital letters of the alphabet, A and B!

But what comes here? We call that poaching, cross-fishing with the double rod. Our good friend the " Bungler," in maxim xviii., says the learned are much divided in opinion as to the propriety of "whipping with two flies." Now, here

come a couple of unconscionable Edinburgh cockneys whipping with forty. Human nature cannot stand that incipient convulsions are in our midriff. The conceited coofs had heard of the double rod from Maule or Goldie, or some other topsawyers, and they too must try it! From opposite stances they regard each other with mutual and equal anxiety, as to the movements and measures most likely to be next carried into immediate effect by the perplexed brethren of the braes. The imitative being a strong instinctive principle in human nature (also in more mere animals than is generally thought-for there are others almost as much so as the monkey and the penguin), do take notice-we beseech us-how, the moment one begins to attempt to wind up, the other is working at his reel too, like a Jew at a barrel-organ. No line could stand that, were the machinery brought into actual play; but great impediments have been encountered-nor does it seem probable, judging from the posture of affairs, that for some time they will be overcome by the gentlemen of the opposition. They are shouting across one of the widest pools keen complaints of some fishing-tackle-monger in London-for our choicest Edinburgh cockneys get everything "from town." "Of course," they have been diddled; and the machinery is at a standstill. Perhaps 'tis better so, than that both lines should have been broken on the wheel. Meanwhile all the forty flies are flying in the air-and even at this distance, we see they are a strange set. Not a few are larger than humming-birds-many are manifestly sea-trout-flies, gay but not gaudy-and (oh! grant gracious heaven that we do not split!) what possible contrivances can those others be that are dangling among the insects? Artificial minnows! by Dædalus!.

That is merciful. But those-yes, they are-those are real worms, and very large worms too- so much so, that we thought they were eels. Cross-fishing with the double-rod by a couple of Edinburgh cockneys, evidently belonging to no particular profession-the line laden with salmon-flies, artificial minnows, and natural worms! We experience considerable curiosity to observe the effect of a sudden descent of all that furniture into the liquid element. There! now we call that making a splash. Fish are easily alarmed; but they soon recover from an ordinary fright, and do not remain all day beneath a bank, because they had the misfortune of catching

.

a gruesome glimpse of your countenance pretty early in the morning. Out of sight out of mind-you seldom for more than a few minutes disturb their tranquillity by merely looking at them; but the effect of a splash of this sort is more lasting; for on venturing from their various places of retreat to inspect warily the cause of their uneasiness, they are "perplexed in the extreme," and of "their wondering find no end,"-above all at the artificial minnows. What they can be, the wisest trout cannot hazard a conjecture, but doubts not that they must be very dangerous; salmon flies, it is true, they have all frequently seen before, but not behaving as they now do, and they too are shrewdly suspected of being novelties that bode mischief to the people; while as for the worms-foul enormous lobs-they would be permitted to putrify in a general famine. But what's the matter now? The pea-green cockney has broken his top, and he in the fiery tartan has got entangled in a tree. Angry words are beginning to be bandied-exaggerated accusations of aggravated crimes—the mutual rage has been exacerbated by its first gesticulations having been misinterpreted from such an inconvenient distance-and now-oh, fie! the gentlemen are brandishing at one another the butends of their rods-all the cross tackle having disappeared― and (loud cries of shame! shame! oh! oh!) they are throwing stones at one another across the Tweed—a regular bicker!

We have for many years acted on the principle of non-interference. Let private individuals or public nations fight as they choose, either at close quarters, or across channels-so long as they don't meddle with us, we don't meddle with them-we care nothing for the balance of power. But that big blockhead in the tartan shies a strong stone; and 'tis as perilous to be here in this unprotected position, as in the trenches before Antwerp. Shall we fly or show fight? We used to excel equally in hipping, hoching, and flinging (we speak not now of wrestling); and surely if his flint reach us, ours will reach him-and as poor Pea-green appeared to us to be shamefully used by Tartan, we shall assist him against the Celt born of Irish parents in the Canongate. There—we call that battering in breach. Christopher continues hipping, hoching, and flinging stones at his enemy across the Tweed, invisible all the while as Apollo or the Plague, when, beneath

his arrows, dogs, mules, and men of the Grecian army, festering at their ships.

fell

Coleridge says that the dullest wight is sometimes a Shakespeare in his sleep. We say that every wight is at all times, more or less, a Shakespeare, broad awake. Mark, more or less; and a Shakespeare, not to a high, but a respectable degree, is Christopher North. Saw you never a Bird-an old Eagle-gambolling in the air like a madman— heaven knows why; when all at once steadying himself on the wing, "a thing most majestical," slowly away he saileth in among the blue mist of the mountains, or some old forest's profounder gloom?

"O sylvan Tweed! Thou wanderer through the woods," not for the sake alone of such pastime,

"Though dear to us the angler's silent trade,

Through peaceful scenes in peacefulness pursued,"

come we now, in the creeping hours of age, to wander, rod in hand, along thy houseless solitudes, and by thy cottaged banks and braes, where children are playing among the primroses, and in the fields below are seen all the cheerful ongoings of half-agricultural, half-pastoral life! Sweet relief from carking care to world-wearied man! But oh! how more than sweet the sense of yet unabated gladness in the serenities of nature, of gratitude for all her goodness, as tender and far more profound than ever touched our spirit in sensitive but thoughtless youth! Then all was joy, or all was grief-bliss keen as anguish-hope bright as faith-fear dark as despair. Now all spiritual affections are more mildly mingled; the mind's experiences and its intuitions coalesce; and human life is seen lying-in a less troubled-in a more solemn—in a holier light!