68 risn A^D PISHING ra SCOTLAND. 



and mortar, commonplace and sham, London, where all is sham, 

 I said to my Cockney friends, that in London it seemed to me 

 "to rain every other day." Some looked grave, others laughed 

 at the idea and thought that I must mean Liverpool or Glasgow, 

 where, thanks be to Providence ! it rains every day and sometimes 

 snows. So I tried again, and next time fancied that it was not 

 every other day, but not much under that, And now I find, 

 after a lapse of thirty years, that my youthful instinct and 

 common observation were as good as modern statistics, which 

 show that of three hundred and sixty-five days, there are in 

 London one hundred and sixty-two on ivliicli it rains. But I 

 must return to the semi-Catholic village, in which we halted but 

 for an hour, to bait, that is, to refresh ; and journeying onwards, 

 our resting-place for the evening was, I think, the Murray Arms, 

 in a suburb bearing the relation to Dumfries which Southwark 

 does to London ; that is, occupying the southern bank of the 

 river. 



It was late ; but we were up early to explore the Nith from 

 the mill-dam, adjoining the town, to the sea ; and in search of 

 many things, especially of that which has not yet been found, 

 " the mouth of the river." 



A good official, a red-tape man of great experience and 

 authority, observed to somebody that he never knew a session 

 pass over in the Commons House of Parliament, without there 

 being placed before it a Salmon Fishery Bill. Whence this care 

 for salmon ? this anxiety for the due preservation of salmon ? 

 Is salmon an essential article of food for this great nation ? Who 

 eats salmon ? Why all this agitation about salmon ? I will 

 tell you. The proprietors of salmon rivers sit in both Houses ; 

 they are men of large influence ; they are, or at least many of 

 them are, the hereditary heirs of at least the properties, and of 

 most of the privileges of the ancient Norman robbers I was about 

 to say or barons almost S3aionymous terms who were, by right 

 of the sword, the heirs of similar Saxon landlords ; they legislate 

 for the nation, and especially for themselves ; but the salmon 

 rivers, as they are called, belong to them ; salmon is a delicate 

 and most excellent fish ; the first of all fishes, the most prized, 

 hence the legislation about salmon. This legislation extends to 



