FRANCE AND BELGIUM. 169 



This places you in a new difficulty. The permission to 

 fish cannot give you permission to walk upon and trample 

 down the grass ; the lessee of which can also issue his 

 commands to the sentinels on duty to protect his herbage 

 from trespass. And if, even in this case, you succeeded 

 in obtaining permission from the lessee, still the soldiers 

 on duty can know nothing of this agreement any more 

 than the other, and will refuse to recognise it. The 

 soldier, it must be remembered, is a mere machine; he 

 acts from general orders; he knows nothing of any ex- 

 ception to his duties; and, therefore, it can never be 

 prudent in any one to resist his authority in such 

 matters. 



Now all this seems sufficiently embarrassing and per- 

 plexing in theory; but in actual practice the angler really 

 meets with little or nothing to give him vexation or 

 inquietude. The fact is, the common law of customs 

 possesses a great influence in France and Belgium. The 

 people will not part with all their privileges and amuse- 

 ments for the sake of keeping up a technical consistency 

 in legal principles and regulations. In every town we 

 have visited, a certain portion of the waters around the 

 fortifications seem to be set apart by custom for public 

 fishing ; and this portion is always a considerable moiety 

 of the whole. On this account the British angler need 

 never be placed in any difficulty, if he demean himself 

 with reason and good temper, and refrain from acting on 

 the absurd principle, that because he is in a foreign 

 country, he is therefore privileged to do whatever the 

 passing whim or caprice may suggest. 



The rivers and streams, and other waters which contain 

 fish are very numerous in France. There are six rivers 

 of the first class, namely, the Rhine, the Meuse, the Seine, 



