d there is no hope. There is a cloud on the distant hill; it
is only the smoke from some moor that has caught fire. The river grows
so transparent that it is easy to watch the lazy fish sulking at the
bottom. Then comes a terrible temptation. Men, men calling themselves
sportsmen, have been known to fish in the innocent dewy morning, with
worm, with black lob worm. Worse remains behind. Persons of ungoverned
passions, maddened by the sight of the fish, are believed to have poached
with rake-hooks, a cruel apparatus made of three hooks fastened back to
back and loaded with lead. These are thrown over the fish, and then
struck into him with a jerk. But the mind willingly turns away from the
contemplation of such actions.

It is pleasanter to think of not unsuccessful days by lowland or highland
streams, when the sun was veiled, the sky pearly grey, the water, as the
people say, in grand order. There is the artistic excitement of choosing
the hook, gaudy for a heavy water, neat and modest for a clearer stream.
There is the feverish moment of adjusting rod and line, while you mark a
fish "rising to himself." You begin to cast well above him, and come
gradually down, till the fly lights on the place where he is lying. Then
there is a slow pull, a break in the water, a sudden strain at the line,
which flies through the rings of the rod. It is not well to give too
much line; best to follow his course, as he makes off as if for Berwick
and the sea. Once or twice he leaps clean into the air, a flying bar of
silver. Then he sulks at the bottom, a mere dead weight, attempting
devices only to be conjectured. A common plan now is to tighten the
line, and tap the butt end of the rod. This humane expedient produces
effects not unlike neuralgia, it may be supposed, for the fish is off in
a new fury. But rush after rush grows tamer, till he is drawn within
reach of the gaff, and so on to the grassy bed, where a tap on the head
ends his sorrows, and the colours on his shining side undulate in
delicate and beautiful radiance. It may be dreadfully cruel, as cruel as
nature and human life; but those who eat salmon or butcher's meat cannot
justly protest, for they, desiring the end, have willed the means. As
the angler walks home, and watches the purple Eildon grow grey in the
twilight, or sees the hills of Mull delicately outlined between the faint
gold of sky and sea, it is not probable that his conscience reproaches
him