PLEASURES 0V ANGLING. O 



bluing sport and philosophy in a charming manner. What 

 a host of names rise up in connexion with the sport ! Sir 

 Francis Chantrey, 



" The Phidus of the second Greece," 



is rugged Ebenezer Elliot calls him ; the author of " Wa- 

 verlcy ; " the inventor of the safety-lamp, and the authoi 

 of a pleasant treatise on fly-fishing, Sir Humphry Davey; 

 Archdeacon Paley, the author of the " Evidences of Chris- 

 tianity;" burly Daniel Webster; the hero of Trafalgar; 

 and a thousand others whose names are " household 

 words " for wit, learning, valour, piety, and truth, suggest 

 themselves as identified with the sport. Neither is the 

 love of it confined to the British isles ; for across the 

 Channel, up the Rhine, nay, even in the solitudes of a 

 Lapland forest, may enthusiastic anglers be found. A 

 friend speaks of the sport he had on the Guadalquiver ; 

 another has "whipped" an Alpine stream with success. 

 Wherever trout are to be found, there will the fisherman be. 

 The Pharaohs fished in the Nile the Romans paid fortunes 

 for red mullet. The Church took care of fishing-grounds in 

 the middle ages, and some of the best streams and lakes 

 I know are near the ruins of an old abbey or priory. 



Who can say that is, then, an ignoble sport ? I have 

 seen it asserted that angling is so quiet, gentle, and con- 

 templative, that I picture at once the snaring of tittle- 

 bats with a crooked pin ; or a dull afternoon in a punt, 

 without a bite discovering after a world of patience that 

 you have forgotten the bait. Ignoble and unexciting ! 

 Let those who have felt the thrill of delight, when they 

 have hooked a magnificent salmon, answer. There is a 

 thin, tapering, flexible wand, a fine, thin gut-line, a small 



