2 WATERSIDE SKETCHES. 



anglers in the moorland country where he lived, died, and 

 lies buried, loved and lamented by rich and poor that it is 

 best to say nothing about the poetry of sport. " I can see 

 nothing in it," he says, "but animal excitement, and a 

 certain quantity, I suppose, of that animal cunning which 

 the Red Indian possesses in common with the wolf and the 

 cat, and any other beast of prey. As a fact, the majority of 

 sportsmen are of the most unpoetical type of manhood. 



For most of them it is sport which at once keeps 

 alive and satisfies what you would call .their aesthetic 

 faculties, and so smile if you will helps to make them 

 purer, simpler, more genial men." 



Truly, the worthy Hampshire rector delivered these senti- 

 ments in the red deer country, and rather in reference to 

 the huntsman and marksman than the less active angler, but 

 never was truer sentence spoken than that concluding 

 remark of his that we English owe too much to our field 

 sports to talk nonsense about them. 



Yet if any sportsman has the right to foster sentimen- 

 tality it is the fisherman. We anglers of this and every 

 other period have been charged with being coxcombs, fools, 

 and what not ; and such we may or may not be. I don't 

 mind crying "Peccavi," however, to one accusation made 

 times out of number against us : we are no doubt a gossip- 

 ing race, and all we can plead in mitigation of sentence is 

 that our garrulity is at least harmless ; which is more than 

 some gossipers dare aver. 



Come with me for an hour or so to a haunt sacred to 

 fishermen's gossip, and judge for yourself. Following the 

 example of the immortal Izaak, I will trouble you, as we 

 walk, with some preliminary prosing. You will find, then r 



