objection against it, that it is hard work to get to it; and that the
angler, often enough half-tired before he arrives at his stream or
lake, has left for his day's work only the lees of his nervous
energy.

Another objection, more important perhaps to a minute philosopher
than to the multitude, is, that there is in mountain-fishing an
element of excitement: an element which is wholesome enough at times
for every one; most wholesome at all times for the man pent up in
London air and London work; but which takes away from the angler's
most delicate enjoyment, that dreamy contemplative repose, broken by
just enough amusement to keep his body active, while his mind is
quietly taking in every sight and sound of nature. Let the Londoner
have his six weeks every year among crag and heather, and return with
lungs expanded and muscles braced to his nine months' prison. The
countryman, who needs no such change of air and scene, will prefer
more homelike, though more homely, pleasures. Dearer than wild
cataracts or Alpine glens are the still hidden streams which Bewick
has immortalized in his vignettes, and Creswick in his pictures; the
long glassy shallow, paved with yellow gravel, where he wades up
between low walls of fern-fringed rock, beneath nut, and oak, and
alder, to the low bar over which the stream comes swirling and
dimpling, as the water-ouzel flits piping before him, and the murmur
of the ringdove comes soft and sleepy through the wood. There, as he
wades, he sees a hundred sights and hears a hundred tones, which are
hidden from the traveller on the dusty highway above. The traveller
fancies that he has seen the country. So he has; the outside of it,
at least: but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is
brought close face to face with the flower, and bird, and insect life
of the rich river banks, the only part of the landscape where the