VALUE OF THE SALMON. 29 



for want of a " drummle." Then, to come to another 

 class of men, the late Henry Hunt was one of the best 

 fly-fishers in England, not grudging, in pursuit of the 

 art, to abandon the glories of demagogism and the 

 profits of blacking-making. Thomas Doubleday, too, a 

 dramatic poet of genuine power, and an ingenious writer 

 on various subjects, who led the fierce democracy of the 

 English coal districts during the Reform struggle, is so 

 devoted a Waltonian that he has, it is said, been known 

 to address the once dread Northern Union at Newcastle, 

 with the flies round his hat, and the air of Coquetdale 

 still fragrant about him. It ought here, however, to be 

 remarked, that, generally speaking, anglers are not fierce 

 politicians, but men of quiet and peaceable lives, seeking 

 solace under wrongs and oppressions in the eminently 

 practical philosophy which Cotton indited and Walton 

 endorsed : — 



"We scratch not our pates, 



Nor repine at the rates 

 Our superiors impose on our living ; 



But do frankly submit. 



Knowing they have more wit 

 In demanding than we have in giving.'' 



Women, too, have been slaves to this fascination, 

 both in ancient days and in these. Cleopatra, for 

 instance (but not as instance of an amiable or even 

 respectable woman), kept her punt on the Cydnus, 

 — "Give me mine angle: we'll to the river;" but, 

 like other women, she had a way of her own, and 

 behaved in a most unsportswomanlike manner in her 

 angling competition with Antony, " when her diver did 

 hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he with fervency 

 drew up." But why go to other times or to eminent 



