THE ANGLER. 



ANGLING has long held a high rank" among the 

 sports of England, and formed a favourite pursuit 

 with all classes of her people, from the peer to the 

 peasant. Poets have written in its praise, and 

 philosophers delighted in its practice. Wherever 

 the brook wanders " through hazy shaw or broomy 

 glen" wherever the willow-hranch waves in the 

 streamlet wherever the trout leaps at the may-fly, 

 the pike lurks in the bulrushes, or the salmon; 

 springs up at the waterfall, -there is to be found 

 the angler, pursuing with unwearied patience and 

 delight his healthful recreation. The boy just 

 breeched spends his holiday on the banks of a 

 brook, with perhaps a crooked pin for his hook, a 

 needleful of thread for his line, and an alder twig 

 for his rod ; and the grey-headed statesman occa- 

 sionally relaxes from his graver duties from ad- 

 justing the balance of power and determining the 

 fate of nations " to wield the rod, and cast the 

 mimic fly."* 



* His late majesty, George the Fourth, was very partial, 

 during his leisure hours, to the amusement of fishing ; and Vir- 

 ginia Water, which covers nearly 1000 acres, afforded him ample 

 scope for this recreation. A most magnificent fishing apparatus 

 was made expressly for his majesty's use by Ustonson, of Temple 



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