148 THE RIVER. 



waters, to view the gaudy flies sparkling, like animated 

 gems, in the sunbeams, while the bright, beautiful trout 

 is watching them from below ; to hear the twittering 

 of the water-birds, who, alarmed at your approach, hide 

 themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water- 

 lilies ; and, as the season advances, to find all these 

 objects changed for others of the same kind, but better 

 and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend, as it 

 were, for the gaudy May-fly ; and till, in pursuing your 

 amusement in the calm and balmy evening, you are 

 serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush, and the 

 melodious nightingale, performing the offices of pater- 

 nal love, in thickets ornamented with the rose and 

 woodbine." 



There is, indeed, a calmness and repose about an- 

 gling which belongs to no other sport, hardly to any 

 other exercise. To be alone and silent f amid the 

 beauties of nature when she is just shaking off the 

 last emblems of the winter's destruction, and springing 

 into life, fresh, green, and blooming, that, that is the 

 charm. The osier bed, as the supple twigs register 

 every fit of the breeze, display the down on the under 

 side of their leaves, and play like a sea of molten silver, 

 for the production of which no slave every toiled in 

 the mine ; and at that little nook where the stream, 

 after working itself into a ripple through the thick 

 matting of conferva and water-lilies, glides silently 

 under the hollow bank, and lies dark, deep, and still 

 as a mirror, is made exquisitely touching by the 

 pendent boughs of the weeping willow that stands 

 "mournfully ever*' over the stilly stream. In such a 

 place, who could refrain from moralizing? From the 



