2 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



there were any, we never could discover it. It lay 

 too deep in philosophy for our line and plummet. 



' ' Tis wiser oft 



To leave the sources of our ills unprobed." 



The Angling Club at C h! we are entitled 



to talk of it. It was formed originally under the 

 auspices of our own great-grandfather. The arm- 

 chair, in which sate our president, was once his. After 

 the old man's death, it was conveyed to our hall, 

 and stood on a sort of low throne at one end of the 

 apartment, surrounded with various implements be- 

 longing to our craft rods, panniers, fishing-spears, 

 &c. 



Pardon, reader, a long digression. We have a 

 natural wish to say something of the ponderous 

 arm-chair and its revered possessor. How rich in 

 associations was that worm-eaten piece of furniture ! 

 Its quaint devices, carved in sable wood, proclaimed 

 it the masterpiece of some mouldered artizan, three 

 centuries ago ; the cushion of crimson velvet, worn 

 and faded ; its lofty Gothic architecture, with gilded 

 figures, Cupids and cherubim all connected its 

 history with the days of old. 



Alas ! the solemn heir-loom is no more ! It fell 

 by degrees from the hands of our club into those of 

 a private individual, and at length settled itself for 

 three long years in the back warehouse of a common 

 pawnbroker. There we detected, but did not purchase 

 it. No ! it was already profaned by the desecrating 

 gaze of the many the auctioneer had placed his 



