474 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



Let Bawdry, Billingsgate, my daughters dear, 

 Support my front, and oatlis bring up the rear. 



In Edinburgli, where woinen do not in general abuse 

 the privilege of their sex, the fishwife alone has a long 

 tongue, and generally a sharp one : in Dublin all are 

 well furnished with this member; and it is mentioned in 

 the memoirs of the late celebrated Irish Demosthenes 

 (as Frenchmen dehght to caU Daniel O'Connell), quite 

 as a feather in his cap, that he once beat an Irish ichthy- 

 opolist of the feminine gender at her own weapons ; ef- 

 fectually silencing his Celseno by bringing unexpected 

 charges against her reputation of an extraordinary na- 

 ture, filched out of the elements of trigonometry and 

 Euclid. The same characteristic Tisiphonism is dis- 

 played by the craft abroad : the poissardes of Paris have 

 ever been distinguished for a free use of words, and 

 abuse of persons: 



Hie sibi perpetuam legit faoundia sedem ; 

 Nee modus hie verbis nee figura abest. 



In Sicily the noise made in disposing of the mutest of 

 creatures is perfectly stunning ; and in Italy at least 

 half the accidentes and accios of the total population of 

 a town are vented in the fishmarket ; or if we look back 

 into the history of ichthyopolism to times when the 

 modern pescheria was represented in Greece by an agora, 

 and in Italy by a forum, we find that even then, as now, 

 it was a noisy calling, entirely in the hands of Ranters. 

 So foul-mouthed at one time was the tribe at Athens, 

 that a benevolent Samian (Lynceus) wrote a book ex- 

 pressly to teach young housekeepers {hvawvoi) the art of 

 battling successfully with ' homicidal fishmongers,' so as 



ward for Smelts,' published their memoirs : we hope their daugh- 

 ters, who have in noways degenerated since that time, will also 

 shortly find a biographer. 



