62 ANGLERS' EVENINGS. 



not something also be said in the fish's favour ? 

 Experience teaches us that it is not when subject to the 

 impulses of passion and the generous dictates of hot- 

 blooded youth, that the mind is most free and most 

 judicious. It is when familiarity with "the pranks o' 

 mankind" has developed in a man the cooler condition 

 of middle life, and produced in him a permanent average 

 of equanimity, — in short, w^hen he is adapted to the 

 temperature of his environment, that the mind is most 

 clear, calm, and philosophical. The fish is always 

 adapted to the temperature of his environment. 



And consider finally how favourable are the conditions 

 of fish-life to contemplation. It has been said that the 

 mind is most free and active when it is least conscious of 

 the presence of a body. Supported in a medium in which 

 he is cushioned without corners, which )'ields with per- 

 fect elasticity, and which he cannot feel ; capable of 

 transporting himself whither he will by a mere tremor of 

 his spinal column ; what hindrances can there be to the 

 free flow of his ideas .'' If Shelley was justified in speak- 

 ing of the sky-lark as a " blithe spirit," an " unbodied 

 joy," surely the terms are still more applicable to the 

 fish, calmly suspended in his medium without even the 

 necessity of using a pair of wings ! And think of the 

 time he has for reflection ! Does he not often 



' ' Under the shade of melancholy boughs 



Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time ?" 



I have seen him motionless for hours together, suspended 

 beneath the shadow of a rock, his large eye gazing into 

 vacancy, and I have said, " What can he be doing but 



