132 FISHING GOSSIP. 



diate operations, will not recall, and feel better for the 

 recollection, the words of Horatio to Bernardo, as the 

 night waned away before the castle of Elsinore, and 

 which so well describe the picture before him : 



" But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, 

 Walks o'er the dew of yond high eastern hill !" 



In the heart-awakening light of these lines, reflecting 

 with so much truth and simplicity the beauty of the 

 hour and the scene, the spear brightens into refine- 

 ment, and the lake below, sleeping in luminous 

 vapour, half-mist half-sunshine, ceases to be the mere 

 hunting-ground of the savage. Thus viewing the 

 prospect and his own relation to it- through the be- 

 iiign teachings of the poet, the spectator feels that 

 barbarism and such an interpreter of nature can no 

 longer co-exist. Touched by the beams of the morn- 

 ing sun, and warmed into new life by the inspirations 

 of poetry, the youth with his spear on the shore be- 

 comes a symbol of the civilisation of man. 



But there must be more than poetry, the pic- 

 turesque, and their genial influences present, to con- 

 stitute a good day for sun-spearing. An absolute 

 calm and a cloudless sky must lend their aid to the 

 undertaking. If the leaves of the aspen (Popidus 

 tremula), of which we are told, incorrectly, I hope, 

 " woemen's tongues are made ; " or the purple spike- 

 lets of the quaking grass (Briza media), from which 

 we brush the dew as we descend to the lake, show 



