ver of an
adjoining hedge, and watched him for the space of half an hour; but he
pulled up nothing but his baited hook;--what his bait was, I know not;
but I suppose, from the vicinity, he was fishing for a "miller's thumb."
Presently, two mealy-mouthed men, from the mill, made their appearance,
cautiously creeping behind him.

I drew myself up in the shadow of the luxuriant quickset to observe their
notions.

A paling in the rear offered the rogues an effectual concealment in case
the angler should turn.

Close to his seat ran some wood-work, upon which they quietly drew the
broad tails of his coat, and driving in a couple of tenpenny nails, left
the unconscious old gentleman a perfect fixture; to be taken at a
valuation, I suppose, part of his personal property being already
"brought to the hammer!" the clattering clamour of the wheel precluding
him from hearing the careful, but no less effectual taps. I certainly
enjoyed the trick, and longed to see the ridiculous issue; but he was so
intent upon his sport--so fixed that he did not discover the nature of
his real attachment while I remained.

Doubtless if he were of a quick and sudden temperament, a snatch of his
humour rent his broad cloth, and he returned home with a woful tail, and
slept not--for his nap was irreparably destroyed!

I hate all twaddle; but when I see an old fool, with rod and line,

"Sitting like patience on a monument,"

and selling the remnant of his life below cost price in the pursuit of
angling,--that "art of ingeniously tormenting,"--a feeling,

"More in sorrow than in anger,"

is excited at his profitless inhumanity.

Vainly do all the disciples of honest Izaak Walton discourse, in
eulogistic strains, of the pleasure of the sport. I can imagine neither
pleasure nor sport derivable from the infliction of pain upon the meanest
thing endowed with life.

This may be deemed Brahminical, but I doubt that man's humanity who can
indulge in the cruel recreation and murder while he smiles.

"What, heretical sentiments," exclaims some brother of the angle, (now I
am an angle, but no angler.) "This fellow hath never trudged at early
dawn along the verdant banks of the 'sedgy lea,' and drunk in the dewy
freshness of the morning air. His lines have never fallen in pleasant
places. He has never performed a pilgrimage to Waltham Cross. He is, in
truth, one of those vulgar minds who take more delight in the simple than
the--gentle!--and