200 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



part of great prowess as an angler, although I take 

 upon me to doubt that he displayed any degree of the 

 science and system esteemed so highly by the Cockney 

 school. 



These sagacious rodsmen, armed with their cunning 

 contrivances, equipped and tricked out in all manner 

 of novelties, may, from sheer and intolerant conceit, 

 turn up the fuming nostril at the plain and rustic 

 enginery of the northern angler, with solemn eulogy 

 exalting their unpractised theories, and making boast- 

 ful exposure of their gleamy baubles ; yet, advance 

 them to the proof, cause them to contest it with the 

 artless craftsmen of Tweedside, and they will confess 

 the utter impotence of their system, renouncing for 

 unadorned simplicity the unnatural similitudes and 

 grotesque inventions of the city artizan. The lure 

 fascinates none the better because it is of brilliant 

 texture or curious and expensive fabric, set off with 

 orient plumage, and bedizened with ribs of tinsel ; 

 more bewitching is the coarse and homely device 

 fashioned after nature by the hands of the untaught 

 peasant. 



These remarks are perhaps over-strained, and entirely 

 out of place. I make them out of a strong abhorrence 

 to the practice of foppery, in an art which, by the 

 good old rules of its patriarchs, ought to disclaim 

 everything of the sort. An ape angling with hum- 

 ming-birds is too severe a caricature upon our craft, 

 and we wish it to be rendered totally inapplicable. 



