THE ANGLERS SOUVENIR. 



33 



half-hour he vainly hopes is the effect of strangu- 

 lation. Finding no delightful solitude out of doors, 

 nor rest in his bed, he returns to town by the 1st 

 of September ; and finds, in the deserted walks 

 and drives of Hyde Park, that freedom from intru- 

 sion which he in vain sought among the hills. 



The evil of those papers is not confined to tempt- 

 ing sober, quiet people, who, 



" Along the cool sequestered vale of life 

 Have kept the noiseless tenor of their way," 



have walked in cork soles by the shady side of the 

 Strand or Fleet Street all their lives to set out on 

 a wild-goose chase after the picturesque, the sub- 

 lime, and the beautiful, among hills and lakes, and 

 then leaving them, as a Will o' the Wisp does his 

 followers, beguiled and laughed at. It extends to 

 others, recalling scenes which they can never again 

 visit, and exciting longings which can never be 

 gratified. The native of Cumberland or Westmore- 

 land, the man of pleasant Teviotdale, or the child 

 of the mist from the Highlands, 



" Absent long and distant far," 



from the hills and streams which in boyhood he 

 loved, who has been immured for years in a Babel 

 of brick and mortar, is seized, on reading those 

 papers, with a species of calenture. Recollections 

 of the happy days of his boyhood come over his 

 mind as he reads the page where, in 

 ' . . . . words that breathe," 



