CHAP. VI.] VISIT TO PARIS LOVE OF FISHING. 59 



we children got into afterwards with the higher powers of the 

 nursery ! 



On the llth of September, 1851, Mr. Smee gave the opening 

 lecture of the session at the Newbury Literary Institution, ' On 

 the Kesults of the Great Exhibition ;' and later on, the 8th of 

 November, he had the melancholy satisfaction of writing in the 

 1 Illustrated London News ' the memoir of his much-lamented 

 friend William Wyon, E.A., the chief engraver to the Mint, 

 whose numerous medals of high artistic worth have given the 

 name of Wyon a wide celebrity. 



On the 25th of November Mr. Smee delivered a lecture be- 

 fore the Bank of England Literary Association, on Instinct and 

 Eeason. 



During the early part of the summer of 1851 there was a 

 reunion of English savants at Paris, under the auspices of 

 Napoleon III., then President. This occasion was the first visit 

 of my father and mother to Paris, and it was the first holiday of 

 more than a day's duration that my father had since 1845. He 

 used, however, to take at times a day's holiday, and spend a few 

 hours at a favourite pastime fishing : for my father was a keen 

 fisherman, and as his love of and skill in angling were well 

 known among many, he had always abundant orders and invita- 

 tions to fish in some choice spot or other. Jack-fishing was a 

 favourite sport of his, and in his dining-room was a very noble 

 specimen of that ferocious fish. Its form is perfect ; it weighed 

 twenty-two pounds, and was killed by a small hook. To hear 

 my father describe the landing of this fish, one could fancy one 

 was listening to a page of Izaak Walton. But my father did 

 not disdain other kinds of fishing. He would sit in a punt on 

 the river for hours, angling for any fish that would come to his 

 hook. 



In such times the scenery of the river, the singing of the 

 birds, afforded him ample enjoyment, and his overworked brain 

 found rest and solace in the charms of Nature. He knew the note 

 of almost every bird, and loved to teach the different songs of 

 the songsters to his children. In trout-fishing he was an adept. 

 During the summer months my grandfather used to take a house 

 for himself and for us in the country, at such a distance from 

 London that he and my father could daily attend their businesses 

 in London, and thence return in the cool of the evening and enjoy 

 the quiet solitude of a country life. Somehow or other our country 



