ANCIENT AND MODERN PISHINa. 7 



the lip of a single trout exposed in tlie Rotunda, or the 

 Portico of Octavia, — they are all poached farios, snared or 

 netted. A beautiful stream which murmurs just under 

 the temple of the Sibyl at TivoH is fiiU of them (others 

 intersect the Campagna, but that is a remarkable one); 

 yet who ever saw a lazy Roman on its banks angling for 

 amusement ? he would sooner, in his indolence, whip his 

 coat-skirts ia the Chiesa Caravita every Priday through- 

 out Lent, at the canonical hour for flagellation, than 

 undertake such a walk to whip the Teveroni with a fly. 

 A fly, quotha! show him one, and he wouldn^t have an 

 idea, nor care to learn, how to use it; and as to a fly- 

 book* if you wished to purchase one on the ' proscribed 

 list,' you would have a better chance of obtaining it, for 

 proscription enhances value, and secures some custo- 

 mers amongst the curious; whereas curiosity has no 

 place here: the modern Roman's sole idea of this caccia 

 is that of petty poaching, or of taking a rusty gun-barrel 

 charged with dust-shot, to pop from a convenient ambus- 

 cade at a basking-fly in some shallow stream, and then 

 carry off in his handkerchief such members as have been 

 disabled by the discharge. As with the people, so with 

 their popes, who, though certainly fond of indulgences, and 

 recommended by their ecclesiastical code to follow that 

 of angling, have never viewed fishing in this light; whilst 

 in the teeth of the same canon, which proscribes the 

 chase as a bloody and improper pastime for the clergy, 

 popes cacciatorif have nevertheless existed. Surely 



* The proprietor of a trout-stream near Lucca once described 

 to us, very feelingly, how some Engliskmen had bewitched his 

 fish out of the water, with certain imitations of dead flies ; which 

 articles not being illegal, he said he could have no remedy. 



t The last Leo was one of these gunpowder Pontiffs, who is 

 yet remembered with gratitude by the olAfuocisti of the Giran- 

 dola, on account of the remission of a tax imposed by his prede- 

 cessors upon that most woful of chemical combinations, charcoal, 

 sulphur, and saltpetre. 



