led them to the landing-net long ago. Dear are the twin Alines, but
dearer is Tweed, and Ettrick, where our ancestor was drowned in a flood,
and his white horse was found, next day, feeding near his dead body, on a
little grassy island. There is a great pleasure in trying new methods,
in labouring after the delicate art of the dry fly-fisher in the clear
Hampshire streams, where the glassy tide flows over the waving tresses of
crow's-foot below the poplar shade. But nothing can be so good as what
is old, and, as far as angling goes, is practically ruined, the alternate
pool and stream of the Border waters, where

The triple pride
Of Eildon looks over Strathclyde,

and the salmon cast murmurs hard by the Wizard's grave. They are all
gone now, the old allies and tutors in the angler's art--the kind
gardener who baited our hooks; the good Scotch judge who gave us our
first collection of flies; the friend who took us with him on his salmon-
fishing expedition, and made men of us with real rods, and "pirns" of
ancient make. The companions of those times are scattered, and live
under strange stars and in converse seasons, by troutless waters. It is
no longer the height of pleasure to be half-drowned in Tweed, or lost on
the hills with no luncheon in the basket. But, except for scarcity of
fish, the scene is very little altered, and one is a boy again, in heart,
beneath the elms of Yair, or by the Gullets at Ashiesteil. However bad
the sport, it keeps you young, or makes you young again, and you need not
follow Ponce de Leon to the western wilderness, when, in any river you
knew of yore, you can find the Fountain of Youth.