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make a reply, and reserve your sarcasm for summer. quarrel on a day of east wind avoid with care; though dead cut on the public walk forget it. Make no complaint of its depressing effect upon you to any who do not suffer from it, otherwise you will be considered affected or imbecile. Should jealousy distract you, mistrust seize you, and a whole legion of the blues reel around you, gather hope from the changing direction of the smoke issuing from your neighbour's chimney-pots. In short, before taking any decisive step at this season, I would say-"Look to the weathercock.”

ANGLERS' FANCIES AND FOIBLES.

WALTON has given a very seductive view of angling, and has connected with the art scenes of meditation, innocence, and rural enjoyment. An angler, in his view, must be a good man. Now, without detracting from the general merits of the character, it has occurred to me, after mixing for a time with the lovers of the gentle craft, that there are some peculiar tendencies in these gentlemen which call for a certain degree of animadversion. Isaac, I think, goes a little too far. A fisher has his fancies and foibles like other men; and without meaning to decry the general respectability of the craft, I would just hint at a few points in which he suffers his imagination to run away with him, and in which he displays a jealousy and selfishness which are not found in the votaries of other sports and recreations.

One of these foibles is a tendency to look at things through the water, to magnify and distort, as it were; a kind of unceremoniousness in dealing with facts, as if these were matters which fishers were entitled by their calling to overlook. For instance, with regard to the number, size, and species of the fish taken, the sportsman, whatever his age, rank, or general character, exhibits an elasticity of conscience which is not observable in his common life. Dozens count for hundreds, an ounce for a pound, and a par or minnow for a trout. The length of a boy's trout is generally the measure of the arm from the tip of the outstretched finger to the elbow. On the subject of salmon

fishing, this largeness of vision is the most remarkable, for a grilse of three pounds thinks nothing of weighing eight or ten in the angler's scales, and those of larger size leap at once into a gigantic salmon. As to the quality of the fish, it suffers a sea-change too, and a yellow kipper blazes like the brightest silver.

It may be said that it would be easy for a well-meaning friend to bring these matters to the test of experience, and convince the deluded sportsman that he labours under some degree of glamour; but I have often tried this, and have always found very considerable difficulty in the way. I have accompanied fishers of high repute to the stream, have stood shivering at their elbow from morn to dewy eve, and after all have only seen a few par committed to the roomy basket. Nevertheless, when I left them in despair of seeing any respectable fish being taken, I have been told, to my utter confusion next day, that ever so many dozens of splendid trout were taken in the twilight just after my departure. I would walk twenty miles to see a salmon taken with the rod, but my curiosity will likely never be gratified. What exploit, however, is more common than this? I have been living for some time in a village on the banks of the Tweed, and in the evening you see sauntering at the door of the inn jolly looking fellows redolent of cigars, with fly hooks twisted round their hats, and their breast pockets swollen out with hook-books, their tall rods leaning against the wall as if reposing, like their masters, after the fatigues of the day. The whole has a grand look; and one cannot help thinking of what the results must be of all this preparation. In the evening you hear the story from their own lips as they converse over their toddy-how nicely a salmon was hooked, how he plunged, how he twisted, how he sulked, how the angler stumbled into a pool, how he swam with the rod in his teeth, how at length with the

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merest gossamer of gut he hauled the leviathan on his side to the bank, and but for the sprain which he received in his wrist during the struggle he would have secured him with his gaff, showing at the same time his wrist somewhat blackened and swollen. The sprain clinches the story, though one might feel inclined, as the company warms into emulation and gives similar details of marvellous adventures, to parody between his teeth the lines of the poet— "And when the circling glass warms your vain hearts, You talk of nibbles that you never felt,

And fancy salmon that you never knew."

In such meetings of the brotherhood, there is often a mutual inspection of hooks and lines which, while leading to a great display of piscatory lore, is intermingled with marvellous details. Each hook has its history. One is taken out with becoming reverence, and the fortunate proprietor, after drawing the snood carefully between his lips, and stroking its somewhat scanty plumage, will tell who was its dresser, what were its adventures, the number of its victims, and all its "moving accidents by flood-for it was found in the mouth of a fish which had been lost and re-hooked-and how it had succeeded in luring some knowing old fish when younger and better appointed hooks had failed. This distinguished instrument is then handed round and commented on; and the young fisher, whose hook-book is a series of illumined pages, each gleaming with flies of oriental lustre, gazes with envy and awe on the little grey veteran as he passes it to his neighbour with a sigh. Now comes a trial of the strength of snoods, and a discourse on the plaiting of lines. Haply one has a line wrought by the well-known captain* from the hair of one

* Monsieur Senebier, the late French teacher in Edinburgh, was one of the most successful anglers in the Tweed district, where his name is still familiar as a household word. He was originally an officer in the French navy, was taken prisoner, and, while on parole, lived on the

of Edina's loveliest daughters, and a murmur of applause is heard through the room, as its elasticity and strength are tested by its proud possessor.

This competition in wonders may be considered a fisher's foible; a graver name should be given to the depreciation to which it leads. The angler demands belief, but he will give none in return. In such scenes as I have alluded to, there is much whispering and eye-dilating in the company; and I have observed that even when a fish was drawn triumphantly from the basket, it did not altogether satisfy them that the exhibitor was the captor. It may be that a noted poacher was on the river that day. The fellow himself turns up at the inn in the evening in a state of dreamy drunkenness; but you may see by his air of resolute self-denial, and the ox-like stare he fixes on the successful angler that his silence is dependent on a demand which the imaginary captor is compelled to satisfy. It may

be remarked that fishers seldom see each other's fish caught, and that they shun one another on the river. They are very fidgetty when people look into their baskets, as if they came to spy the nakedness of the land. A noted fisher of my own acquaintance on seeing a tyro in the art undoubtedly hook and draw ashore a fish, remarked with some spleen that the creature had very bad teeth. Even the gift of a salmon from a fishing friend to another of the craft, though in itself acceptable, appears to occasion some sort of uneasiness; and often there is a minute inspection to discover if the fish be not a regular capture of the net, with a mouth unconscious of the hook. This I hold to be ungenerous.

banks of the Tweed. His long residence in Scotland and his social disposition gave him the dialect and the feelings of a native Scotsman. He was very dexterous in the plaiting of fishing lines, some of which were composed of the locks of ladies of distinction.