honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you
think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tarn Grieve never gruppit sae
heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.--Curse that collie!
Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks--if
that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail,
come bellowing by between us and the river, then, "Madam! all is lost,
except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at
seven. Our will is made--ten thousand to the Foundling--ditto to the
Thames Tunnel--ha--ha--my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss
thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further
resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself
to death! No faith in female--she trusts to the last trial of her
tail--sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle
spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy
planet. Scrope--Bainbridge--Maule--princes among Anglers--oh! that you
were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious
sympathy--far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing
the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow
in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious
vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas!
Poor Sandy--why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!--Peter! The
Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with
a swirl--whitening as she nears the sand--there she has it--struck right
into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or
Venus--and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of
beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood!

"The child is father of the man,
And I would wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety!"

So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun,
formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the plane-tree--the
beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree--that
stands straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from
afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in
sheltered inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman's or
peasant's cottage.

Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such
as soldiers bear--a Christmas present from p