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 Givan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy--why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!--Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she saüs, 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--fair as the shoulder of our own beloved, and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demi-god 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 pop or 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 popgun, in shape like a very musket, such as soldiers bear--a Christmas present from parent--once a Colonel of volunteers--nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinder end of play-mate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such ineffectual trigger--and his soul, as well as his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary compound--Gunpowder. He begins with burning off his eyebrows on the King’s birth-day--squibs and crackers follow--and all the pleasures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off a gun--“and follows to the field some warlike lord”--in hopes of being allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire-arms, and from that hour he is--a Shooter.