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-branch 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 

 A3 



