io ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



there were any, we never could discover it. It lay 

 too deep in philosophy for our line and plummet. 



" ; Tis wiser oft 



To leave the sources of our ills unprobed." 



The Angling Club at C h ! we are entitled to 



talk of it. It was formed originally under the auspices 

 of our own great-grandfather. The armchair, in which 

 sat our president, was once his. After the old man's 

 death, it was conveyed to our hall, and stood on a sort 

 of low throne at one end of the apartment, surrounded 

 with various implements belonging to our craft rods, 

 panniers, fishing-spears, &c. 



Pardon, reader, a long digression. We have a 

 natural wish to say something of the ponderous arm- 

 chair and its revered possessor. How rich in associa- 

 tions was that worm-eaten piece of furniture ! Its 

 quaint devices, carved in sable wood, proclaimed it 

 the masterpiece of some mouldered artizan, three 

 centuries ago ; the cushion of crimson velvet, worn 

 and faded ; its lofty Gothic architecture, with gilded 

 figures, Cupids and cherubim all connected its history 

 with the days of old. 



Alas ! the solemn heir-loom is no more ! It fell 

 by degrees from the hands of our club into those of a 

 private individual, and at length settled itself for three 

 long years in the back warehouse of a common pawn- 

 broker. There we detected, but did not purchase it. 

 No ! it was already profaned by the desecrating gaze 

 of the many the auctioneer had placed his unhallowed 



