FISHES AND FISHING. 27 



baiting. All my pocket money was expended upon 

 these objects, but I had to encounter the opposition 

 of my father, who having been unsuccessful himself 

 as an angler, and being devoted to his garden, looked 

 on angling in a very unfavourable point of view, and 

 what with my attendance at school, and my father's 

 discouragement, my pursuit of piscatorial knowledge 

 was enveloped in difficulties. My mother having 

 given my father another son, never angled but once, 

 and that was on the occasion of a visit of a friend 

 from town, when I went with him and her in a punt 

 gudgeon fishing in the Thames, I being occasionally 

 allowed to hold one or other of the rods. 



In 1780, the No-Popery riots took place in London, 



and a Mr. L , whose house and furniture were 



burned, and he himself escaped with difficulty, he 

 being a Catholic, was sent by the firm in town 

 in which my father was a partner, for shelter in 

 our house. My mother dispatched me to my father, 

 who was at the works. I took with me my bow, 

 which was a most excellent one, and some sharp, 

 steel-pointed, and feathered arrows, I had crossed 

 more than half the first enclosure of the paddock, 

 when a bull who was there grazing, espied me and 

 gave chase. I ran for my life, and reached a high 

 stile over which I was in the habit of pitching a sum- 

 mersault, throwing my bow and arrows first over; 



