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pointed is composed of able and experienced men, and we believe, moreover, sincere in the cause. Of the nature of their report we can entertain no doubt, nor of the legislation that should follow it;--but of practical success we are less sanguine, because we know too well the numerous disciples that wickedness and weakness furnish to the iron school of utilitarian sophistry. It is the duty of every man to aid this investigation; but it is his interest too-a stronger and more durable argument! for we tell him that if he would maintain the status quo, the fashionable diplomacy of the present day, he must do so by measures far different from the jog-trot policy of the last half century. Hamlets are grown into cities; a little one is become a thousand; we were then few in number; and now are we as the stars of heaven for multitude.' Is the government of this kingdom as tranquil as it was before? Will discontent be frowned down, or rebellion always be checked with equal facility? The two great demons in morals and politics, Socialism and Chartism, are stalking through the land; yet they are but symptoms of an universal disease, spread throughout vast masses of the people, who, so far from concurring in the status quo, suppose that anything must be better than their present condition. It is useless to reply to us, as our antagonists often do, that many of the prime movers in these conspiracies against God and good order are men who have never suffered any of the evils to which we ascribe so mighty an influence. We know it well; but we know also that our system begets the vast and inflammable mass which lies waiting, day by day, for the spark to explode it into mischief. We cover the land with spectacles of misery; wealth is felt only by its oppressions; few, very few, remain in those trading districts to spend liberally the riches they have acquired; the successful leave the field to be ploughed afresh by new aspirants after gain, who, in turn, count their periodical profits, and exact the maximum of toil for the minimum of wages. No wonder that thousands of hearts should be against a system which establishes the relations, without calling forth the mutual sympathies, of master and servant, landlord and tenant, employer and employed. We do not need to express our firm belief that there are beneficent and blessed exceptions-but generally speaking-in those districts and those departments of industry, the rich and the poor are antagonist parties, each watching the opportunity to gain an advantage over the other. Sickness has no claim on the capitalist; a day's absence, however necessary, is a day's loss to the workman; nor are the numerous and frightful mutilations by neglected machinery (terminating as they do in the utter ruin of the sufferer) regarded as conferring, either in principle or practice, the smallest pretence to

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lasting compensation or even temporary relief. We could fill our pages with instances of terrific accidents that have befallen young children, and of the still more terrific heartlessness that has refused even a word, we say not an act of kindness towards the miserable victims; but we forbear, because on this head it would be difficult to say little; and we have not space left for much.

But here comes the worst of all-these vast multitudes, ignorant and excitable in themselves, and rendered still more so by oppression or neglect, are surrendered, almost without a struggle, to the experimental philosophy of infidels and democrats. When called upon to suggest our remedy of the evil, we reply by an exhibition of the cause of it; the very statement involves an argument, and contains its own answer within itself. Let your laws, we say to the Parliament, assume the proper functions of law, protect those for whom neither wealth, nor station, nor age, have raised a bulwark against tyranny; but, above all, open your treasury, erect churches, send forth the ministers of religion; reverse the conduct of the enemy of mankind, and sow wheat among the tares-all hopes are groundless, all legislation weak, all conservatism nonsense, without this alpha and omega of policy; it will give content instead of bitterness, engraft obedience on rebellion, raise purity from corruption, and life from the dead'—but there is no time to be lost.

Oftentimes in contemplating the history of this empire; the greatness of its power; the peculiarity of its condition; its vast extent, one arm resting on the East, the other on the West; its fleets riding proudly on every sea; its name and majesty on every shore; the individual energy of its people; their noble institutions, and, above all, their reformed faith-we are tempted to think that God's good providence has yet in store for us some high and arduous calling. The long-suffering of the Almighty invites us to repentance; evils that have engulfed whole nations, suspended over us for a while, and then averted, exhibit the mercyand the probable termination of it:

-'Death his dart

Shook, but delayed to strike'

Let us catch at this proffered opportunity, which may never return; betake ourselves with eagerness to do the first works; and while we have yet strength, and dominion, and wealth, and power, break off our sins by righteousness, and our iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of our tranquillity.'

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*Daniel iv. 27.

ART.

ART. VI.-1. The Rod and the Gun; being two Treatises on Angling and Shooting. By James Wilson, F.R.S.E., and by the Author of The Oakleigh Shooting Code.' 1 vol. 12mo.

Edinburgh, 1840.

2. The Moor and the Loch. By John Colquhoun. 1 vol. 8vo. London, 1840.

3. Maxims and Hints for an Angler, and Miseries of Fishing, &c. By Richard Penn, F.R.S. 12mo. Murray, London, 1839.

ANGLING, like printing, appears to have been an art that

came to perfection nearly at once. True it is that if Lady Julyana Berners, Bernes, or Barnes-for the correct mode of writing the Prioress's surname is lost in the mists of antiquitywere to lift her venerable head from the moss-grown aisle of Sopewell, to revisit the glimpses of this go-a-head world, she might be rather puzzled at the names of the portraits in the 'fly-leaf' of the first of the books now before us. She would

not, we admit, exactly be aware of the merits of the killing Sam Slick and the seductive Green Mantle, albeit the characters whose names they bear are as familiar in our day as household words. Neither could she be expected to know much of The Professor or Long Tom, however well she might be acquainted -poor mortal!—with The Grizzly King. But we would venture our best rod that if she were placed by the side of a river or lake she would soon fill her creel with store of fish, provided always, as honest Izaak hath it, they were there, and provided also that they were inclined to bite, and that the hook was baited.*

Tradition gives the following origin to the nunnery, which was under the rule—we are sure it was gentle-of the sporting Prioress, and which was situated at a small distance to the south-west of St. Alban's. Two women, whose names have been long forgotten, came to Eywood, and there, by the river-side, they put together a rude kind of hermitage. In this humble abode, formed of branches of trees and covered with bark and leaves, they dwelt, until the fame of their abstinent, chaste, charitable, and religious lives reached the ears of Jeffery, the sixteenth Abbot of St. Alban's. Touched with their self-denial, their piety, and their active virtues, the good Abbot, about the year 1140, built a cell for them, causing them to be clothed like nuns,

* Some years ago it was said that the fish in Virginia Water showed a wonderful predilection for the royal hook; a fact, the truth of which, when disputed, was stoutly maintained by a sly Deipnosophist present, who, after his audience had expressed sufficient surprise at his tenacity and credulity, quietly added that the hooks of all the rest of the courtly company were without bait.

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and to live according to Benedictine rule. here, for he granted them lands and rents. not pay any very great compliment to the inmates of this cell; for, on the ground of preserving their fame from the attacks of scandal, he ordered that they should be always locked up in their house, and that their number should not exceed thirteen, all select virgins.' He also gave them permission to bury there; but only for themselves, not for strangers, his liberality not going the length of a grant which would probably enrich their shrine at the expense of his own. The number of the saintly sisters had dwindled to nine at the dissolution, and the yearly value of the house was then estimated by Dugdale at 407. 7s. 10d.; though Speed makes it 687. 8s.

Dame Juliana-(a sister, it is supposed, of Richard Lord Berners, of Essex)-appears to have become Prioress about 1460, and the first edition (folio) of her book, commonly known as the Boke of St. Alban's, printed at that place in 1486—(with Caxton's letter, probably)-contained the treatises on Hawking, Hunting, and Coat-Armour. The republication in 1496, including, in addition, the treatise on Fishing, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster.

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Modern treatises have not disdained to take an occasional leaf out of our noble and learned lady's book. This, for instance :After recommending a roche' or a freshe heerynge' as a bait for a pike, the fair angler gives us another manere 'Take the same bayte,' or a frosshe' (frog)- and put it in assa fetida, and caste it in the water wyth a corde and a corke, and ye shall not fayl of hym; and yf ye lyst to have a good sporte, thenne tye the corde to a gose fote; and ye shall se gode halynge, whether the gose or the pyke shall have the better.' Dainty amusement for the Prioress and her bevy of maids of heaven;' wherein may be traced-barring the assafoetida-the 'huxing' and bottleracing' for pike of modern times; directions for which, with small variations from those vouchsafed by the pious original, may be seen in almost every book on angling from Barker and Walton downwards. Her style may be judged of by the following passages, in the first of which she thus improves the occasion:

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'Ye shall not use this forsayd crafty dysporte for no covetysenes, to the encreasynge and sparynge of your money oonly; but principally for your solace, and to cause the helthe of your body, and specyally of your soule for whanne ye purpoos to goo on your dysportes in fysshynge, ye woll not desyre gretly many persons with you, whyche myghte lette of your game. And thenne ye may serve God, devowtly, in saying affectuously your custumable prayer; and, thus doynge, ye shall eschewe and voyde many vices.'

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The stealthy delights of the walking-cane rod were well known to her after directions for its construction the Prioress knowingly adds

And thus shall ye make rodde so prevy, you a that ye may walk therwyth; and there shall noo man wyte where abowte ye goo.'

But we cannot speak very highly of this holy dame's taste in culinary affairs: she was evidently no cordon bleu. She appears to have thought highly of the worst fish for the table, in our opinion, extant.

The barbyll is a swete fysshe; but it is a quasy meete, and a perylous for mannys body. For, comynly, he givyth an introduxion to the febres and yf he be eaten rawe-hear it not, Comus-' he may be cause of mannys dethe, whyche hath oft be seen.'

That raw barbel ought to cause the death of any civilized, unfeathered, two-legged animal, all cooks will allow that such an event should have been frequent can only be accounted for by that delightful state of unsophisticated nature which prevailed in the fifteenth century. What would the Hon. Robert Boyle, who speaks with abhorrence of eating raw oysters, have said to this? Certainly he who swallowed the first oyster was a bold man; but he was well rewarded for his bravery in discussing the sapid mollusk not only unwashed and undressed, but also unshaven.*

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For some time Dame Juliana's book seems to have been allsufficient for our ancestors; nor does there appear to have been any publication of note till 1651, when The Art of Angling, wherein are discovered many rare secrets, very necessary to be known by all that delight in that recreation, written by Thomas Barker, an ancient practitioner in the said art,' made its appearance in the shop of Oliver Fletcher, 'neer the Seven Stars, at the west end of St. Paul's.' This seems to have taken with the patient fraternity; for in 1654 it made part of the Countryman's Recreations,' and in 1657 another edition, much enlarged,' with the addition of Barker's Delight,' at the head of the titlepage, was printed for Richard Marriott, of St. Dunstan's Church-yard, Fleet-street. And, indeed, odd as some of the contents are, a most instructive book it was. From the author, Walton, as he himself acknowledges, learned most of the little he knew about fly-fishing. The end of his 'epistle dedicatory' is highly characteristic:

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If any noble or gentle angler of what degree soever he be, have a mind to discourse of any of these wayes and experiments, I live in Henry the 7th's Gifts, the next doore to the Gatehouse in Westm. My

* It has lately been satisfactorily proved that oysters are diœcious, in other words that they are distinctly male and female; so that there is meaning in Tilburina's madness: an oyster may be crossed in love.'

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