PLEASURES Olf ANGLING. 



billing sport and philosophy in a charming manner. What 

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

 Francis Ohantrey, 



" The Phidaa of the second Greece,'' 



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

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

 of a pleasant treatise on fly-fishing. Sir Humphrj'Daveyj 

 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 Ehine, 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 j 

 another has "whipped" an Alpine stream with success. 

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

 The Pharaohs fished in the Nile — the Eomans 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, fle-xible wand, a fine, thin gut-line, a smaL 



