lived in momentary expectation, mingled with
fear, of a monster. Better far from sunrise to sunset never to move a
fin, than oh! me miserable! to hook a huge hero with shoulders like a
hog--play him till he comes floating side up close to the shore, and
then to feel the feckless fly leave his lip and begin gamboling in the
air, while he wallops away back into his native element, and sinks
utterly and for evermore into the dark profound. Life loses at such a
moment all that makes life desirable--yet strange! the wretch lives
on--and has not the heart to drown himself, as he wrings his hands and
curses his lot and the day he was born. But, thank Heaven, that ghastly
fit of fancy is gone by, and we imagine one of those dark, scowling,
gusty, almost tempestuous days, "prime for the Brother Loch." No glare
or glitter on the water, no reflection of fleecy clouds, but a
black-blue undulating swell, at times turbulent--with now and then a
breaking wave,--that was the weather in which the giants fed, showing
their backs like dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and sucking in
the red heckle among your very feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then
the fly was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you could do nothing
with the worm. Oh! that we had then known the science of the spinning
minnow! But we were then but an apprentice--who are now Emeritus Grand
Master. Yet at this distance of time--half a century and more--it is
impious to repine. Gut was not always to be got; and on such days a
three-haired snood did the business--for they were bold as lions, and
rashly rushed on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted body with
star-y-pointed tail maddened them with desire--no dallying with the gay
deceiver--they licked him in--they gorged him--and while satiating their
passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong
horse ploughing up-hill. How he sets his brisket to it--and snooves
along--as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding
share. So snooved along the Monarch of the Mere--or the
heir-apparent--or heir-presumptive--or some other branch of the royal
family--while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod
enclosing some new segment of the sky.

But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even
angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion
wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle
alway," thinks th