harvest of oats, or herding his shaggy black-faced flock, is a branch of the great Atlantic. It is as salt as the sea. It ebbs and flows with the sea. At Venice they Here we have it among

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have the tide in their streets. bean-fields and corn-fields. tamed. He has beaten his spear and his battle-axe into agricultural implements, and leads a pastoral life.

I do not know any place where the sportsman and the naturalist ought to be happier than here. The hills are purple with heather, and the heather is thickly peopled. From your bedroom window, in these mild autumn mornings and evenings, you hear the muircocks crowing valiantly. The black game haunt the roots of the pines, and a brace of spotted ptarmigan can be had any day upon the crest up yonder. The marsh across the loch is a famous resort of the mallard, and the loch itself is loved by the Arctic wild-fowl. Already 'long strings of geese are flying southward in double file from their northern breeding-places. A flock occasionally pauses in mid-air, and after describing a series of eccentric circles, plunges clamorously into the cool water. A pair of black-throated divers built their nest this summer among the reeds on the island, and they are now to be seen every afternoon-attended by a couple of diverlings, or little divers, the fruit of their industry-about the centre of the bay.

Your boyish tastes leave you as you grow old,-as the grey steals into your hair, and the chill into your heart; but I am thankful that even yet I have not quite lost the early passion for the rod and the gun;

and that on occasion I can still handle either. It is worth living a twelvemonth to bring down a brace of grouse, right and left, on the morning of the twelfth. A snap-shot at a woodcock in a young spruce-cover is almost too severe an enjoyment for creatures who are merely mortal. I fancy that there must be wild-duck in Paradise, and that they will rise out of the reeds there exactly as they do now, with this difference only, that they will be oftener within range. Let us return thanks for the mercies bestowed upon us. You and I have indeed good reason to be grateful that, while landing a sea-trout, or creeping on a wild-duck, our hearts still beat as anxiously and eagerly as when we were boys.

Yet I own that I am now rather inclined to leave the hard work to the younger men. They walk their twenty or thirty miles across the heather, and bring back their twenty or thirty brace of birds a day; while, attended by Angus, I scramble across the moss for a chance shot at a mallard, or saunter about the burnmouth, where the big sea-trout lie. Trout-fishing is a sport for the gods. Sportsmen wax eloquent upon the salmon. A battle-royal with a salmon, such as I read of the other day, which lasted from four o'clock of the afternoon till four o'clock of the summer morning, where the monster was five feet in length, and must have weighed fifty pounds, if an ounce, is fit for Homer's muse. One does not like to scrutinisetoo closely the blank feeling of dismay which the fisher must have experienced when, after that twelve hours'

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'tug of war,' his line 'came in loose,' and the conviction
flashed across his mind that the monster was off.
it worth his while to continue in this perplexed and im-
perfect world any longer? But, upon the whole, I
cannot help regarding salmon-fishing as vanity and
vexation. You stagger about the river-bank with a
piece of elm, like the mast of a small schooner, in your
hands. The labour of whipping the water with that
gigantic flail is overwhelming. When you do hook a
fish, it may be that you are in a measure repaid; but
then you generally don't. Trout-fishing, on the con-
trary, is a pleasing and gentle excitement. You carry
a light rod, which does not weary your arm-merely
bringing the muscles agreeably into play; and you
occasionally succeed in getting something more than
the fine rise' on which the salmonist harps. You
have leisure to relish your weed, and to enjoy the
architecture of cloud and tree, of hill and river-bank.
Even at its best, salmon-fishing is a somewhat sorrowful
amusement, a melodrama which keeps all the faculties
on the stretch,-

A tale divine of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chanted;

whereas trout-fishing is like the light comedy, which assimilates peaceably with a bottle or two of the '44. 'It is,' as Walton says, 'that most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and harmless art of angling;' or, as Sir Harry Wotton found it, a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet

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thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness.'

Angus is engaged upon a captivating fly, so I lay my rod down upon the sand-for the tide flows to where we are stationed—and retreating under the shelter of the bank, spend the next half-hour with Mr. Izaak Walton. Don't you find that you relish the Complete Angler to-day more keenly than you did five-andtwenty years ago ? I know that I do; and that I cherish quite a different feeling for the kindly, sweettempered, studious, gentlemanlike old 'fogy,' than I did then. In truth, he rather bored us at first. We wanted to know directly what bait to select, or how to busk a particular fly, and we found that these pedantic courtesies and formal introductions rather came in the way. But no good fisher or good man can long resist the benevolent simplicity of his manners, the goodness and sweetness of his heart. We may smile occasionally at the high office which he assigns to his favourite art among the arts; at the virtues which it breeds, and the capacities which it demands. We may fancy that Walton, when he asserts that 'angling is something like poetry,—men are to be born so: I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice; but he that hopes to be a good angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself,' is only a little less extravagant than Markham, who assures us, in his Country Contentments, that the

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angler must be a general scholar, and seen in all liberal sciences; as a grammarian to know how to write a discourse of his art, and in true and fitting terms. He should have sweetness of speech, to entice others to delight in an exercise so much laudable. He should have strength of argument, to defend and maintain his profession against envy and slander. Then must he be strong and valiant; neither to be amazed with storms, nor affrighted by thunder: and if he is not temperate, but hath a gnawing stomach that will not endure much fasting, but must observe hours, it troubleth the mind and body, and loseth that delight which maketh the pastime only pleasing.' But then we know that some of the best of men have been fishers,-from the time of the prophet Amos, concerning whom,' Piscator observes, I shall make but this observation, that he that shall read the humble, lowly, plain style of that prophet, and compare it with the high, glorious, eloquent style of the prophet Isaiah (though they be both equally true), may easily believe Amos to be, not only a shepherd, but a good-natured plain fisherman: which I do the rather believe, by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, humble Epistles of St. Peter, Saint James, and Saint John, whom we know were ali fishers, with the glorious language and high metaphors of Saint Paul, whom we may believe was not.' know that that holy poet, Mr. George Herbert,' loved angling; 'and,' as Venator adds, 'I do the rather believe it because he had a spirit suitable to anglers, and those primitive Christians that you love, and have

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