42 DOWN THE BECK 



wicked in hell being exposed naked to the stings 

 of wasps and flies ! It is useful, however, to be 

 thus reminded that even so innocent a sport as 

 angling has its drawbacks. Perhaps such small 

 annoyances should be received as part of the 

 discipline of fishing ; winged blessings they then 

 become, modes of teaching unpleasant, perchance, 

 at the time, but none the less fraught with profit 

 to the true angler, who is always more or less of a 

 moralist. 



It is time, though, to turn homewards. Our 

 endeavour has been to depict some of the charms 

 connected with angling, and to recommend it as a 

 recreation specially adapted for the feverish agita- 

 tion of modern social life. Over and above its 

 immediate end, it is a school for moral virtues and 

 the observing faculties which cannot be too highly 

 honoured. The fisherman, like the poet, must be 

 born ; but he owes his success, even more than the 

 poet, to perseverance and observation. However 

 long the sport may be intermitted, when a man has 

 once tasted its joys, and imbibed a thorough love 

 of angling, he resumes it with eagerness on the 

 first favourable opportunity. Nay, the taste is 

 one which deserts not its votary in death. Few 

 angling reminiscences are more touching than the 

 scene which his daughter has described so patheti- 



