11 



have known some trout and salmon fishers in our day, 

 and the best of them were pot-fishers ; not men who 

 fished for a living, "but who walked far and waded deep 

 to "bring home a prime salmon for the kettle, or a creel 

 full of trout for the frying-pan. The author of Salmonia, 

 who is not disinclined to let us know that he enjoyed 

 the acquaintance of a Prince of the Blood Royal, and 

 had lived with the great cum magnis vixisse would 

 form no unapt motto for the hook is more at home at 

 Denham, within the sound of "the dressing-bell, which 

 rings at half-past four," preparatory to dinner at five, 

 than on the "banks of a Highland loch, where the select 

 party is annoyed by the sight of a powerful Highland- 

 man with his tail on. Mountain lochs and streams 

 cannot be so strictly preserved as two or three miles of 

 stream in Buckinghamshire ; nor gentlemen anglers in 

 Boss-shire, so well fenced in from chance intruders jis 

 by the side of a brook which skirts a gentleman's plea- 

 sure-grounds within twenty miles of London. 



My-fishing is most assuredly that branch of angling 

 which is the most exciting, and which requires the 

 greatest skill with the greatest personal exertion to 

 insure success. Fly-fishing in a preserved water, where 

 a gentleman, perchance in ball-room dress, alights from 

 his carriage to take an hour or two's easy amusement, 

 is no more like fly-fishing in a mountain stream, where 

 the angler wanders free to seek his fish where he will 

 and take them where he can than slaughtering phea- 

 sants, in a manner fed at the barn-door, and almost as 

 tame as the poultry which are regularly bred in the 



