26 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



all over with palsy, and his very bowels become feculent 

 with disease when he has had a hard dry cough, one 

 that comes by fits and seems to tear his emaciated carcase 

 to pieces when his breath has been like the effluvium 

 of a jakes, or the exhalations of a rotten fen when 

 rising from his frowsy and restless bed, he has not been 

 able to swallow a single mouthful, nor carry that mouthful 

 to his head without previously drenching his stomach with 

 bitters and brandy when dry colic and offensive diarrhoea 

 have taken turn and turn about in his miserable intestines 

 when his legs have been swelled as big as mill-posts, and 

 surcharged with water when tapping has grown useless 

 by repetition, and belladonna ceased to act when his 

 chest has been as full of bilge- water as the wreck of a 

 leaky herring smack when, in fact, he has become one 

 incarnation of filth and disease, we have taken him by 

 the hand, led him quietly to the banks of some pleasant 

 stream, and put a rod into his languid grasp; and then, 

 with the indispensable assistance of Father Mathew, have 

 restored him with renovated health to his heart-broken 

 family, and again made him a useful member of society. 

 We love angling, too, because it takes us from the 

 confusion, the filth, and the social and moral degra- 

 dation of large towns and cities. It places us in 

 close contact with one of the most important divisions 

 of human labour and skill the cultivation of the 

 soil, which is the real foundation of all national wealth 

 and true social happiness, and which the ancients 

 held in such high estimation that they ascribed divine 

 honours to those who were successful inventors of useful 

 and practical modes of husbandry. Every thing connected 

 with the land is calculated to foster the best and noblest 

 feelings of the soul, and to give the mind the most lofty 



