man who
has drunk the deep delight of landing a fish of the normal weight of 6
or 7 lb.; yet this seemed to have been the average. Put it down to the
east wind by all means. An honest Thames trout, properly educated up
to the modern standard, would be unworthy of the confidence of the
great metropolitan angling clubs if he so violated piscatorial law as
to allow himself to be caught under such conditions, and it is but
charity to suppose that these legally sizable but morally undersized
fish were giddy youths, upon whom the example of the veterans, poising
themselves steelproof in the current, yet virtueproof against
temptation, was sadly thrown away.

Fish or no fish, it is, nevertheless, worth something to stand awhile
at the head of the weir and indulge in those soothing reveries which a
running stream provokes. You cross the lock, and by the permission of
the lockkeeper (whose good temper is sorely tried these holiday times
by the incessant passage of pleasure boats, bound for Surley, and maybe
Monkey Island) pass over the pretty island, and enter upon the plankway
which communicates with the further bank. The weir is broad, and its
construction such that the heavy body of water from above stampedes
through at your feet in magnificent force. Shout at your topmost pitch
of voice if you would carry on a conversation with the roar of the
swirl in the listener's ears. No fewer than seventeen distinct floods
are pouring between the beams with never two escaping alike. As
different are they as the current of our individual lives; now quietly
gliding in, but not off, the racket on either side; now confidently
asserting themselves by a semi-turbulent merriness; now all babble and
bubble and surface; now dark, deep, and masterful through hidden force
under a calm countenance; now tearing, and dashing, and running away
with quickly scattered impulse.

Yonder, the sleeping island o'ershadowed by trees on the left, and the
high indented bank on the right, seem to gather these diverse streams
within their arms and reduce them to something like uniformity of
purpose. And then, looking up and around from the seething pool, you
see the stately grey towers of Windsor rising above the land, and the
level meadows stretching green towards the eminences made picturesque
by the woods.

The tradition amongst the fishermen is that Boveney Weir is full of
"rum uns." This I take to be a confession of faith in the existence of
l