6 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



Cleopatra^ it seems, was the better sportsman of the 

 twOj and her superior skill sometimes tried the trium- 

 vir's temper not a little. On one occasion^ when he 

 had taken nothingj and was about to quit the spot, the 

 Egyptian Queen, not yet wishing to put up her line,* 

 gave a signal to a trusty diver to go down and fasten a 

 fish upon her innamorato's hook ; Antony, seeing his 

 float bob immediately, struck, felt something heavy, and 

 pulled out, to his confusion, and the delight of every- 

 body else on board, a whacking stock-fishj which so set 

 his amour propre against his improper love, that she had 

 some difficulty in re-establishing peace. 



Such was the love of angling in the days of Imperial 

 Rome; was, and is not! The true sportsman spirit died, 

 and was buried, with the contemporaries of the Csesars, 

 ' extrema per Ulos vestigia fecit.' Whether it be the 

 spirit of malaria, or the divine do-nothing spirit, that 

 has wholly quenched the sporting spirit in the breast of 

 the modem Italian, we do not pretend to know; but that 

 the race of anglers is entirely extinct, and the gentle 

 art become a mere tradition at Rome and elsewhere 

 throughout Italy, we certainly do. The eternal city is 

 just as ichthyophagous as ever it was, and every one 

 who can purchase a spigola or a mullet for his hebdo- 

 madal fasts, does so; and those who cannot afford ' pesce 

 nobUe' for dinner, are well content with 



Greasy alose sputtering from the stall, 



or any other plebeian species; but whUe thus,in one sense, 

 all are ' fish that come to the net' at Rome, it remains 

 to add, that whether of fresh or of salt water, they are, 

 in a literal sense, also net fish: not a hook ever entered 



* The earliest mode of taking fish used by the Nimrods of 

 Egypt, and previous to the invention of either hooks or nets, was, 

 says Mr. Moule, the spear, which we think doubtful, and at any 

 rate requiring proof. 



