or a jenny spinner, will sometimes excite them to languish and longing, but, on the whole, you had better begin with the smallest cochlabondhu you can find. If they are rising at all, and refuse to look at it, after a dozen suggestions, change it. They are, of course, less particular in the evening, but then the pike have finished work for the day, and your catch will coldly furnish you with bait for a to-morrow which may never come. Trout are not nearly so coy and nice in their appetites, whatever their admirers may pretend. If a trout can be got to rise at the ninth application, the dace will not rise till the twelfth. But, as the French general said to encourage the negro officer, Eh bien ! Continuez! The last fly in your book may be the very fly which our friend desires. In the evening it is best to try the olive dun first but in broad day the natural bait saves time and temper on the whole. So small, but yet so evasive! So common, but yet so hard to find! There is something almost elfin about this fascinating and baffling little fellow, that puts one on one's mettle. For two hours I have been at him without one single relaxing pause, and an old and crafty angler has been advising me all the time in

a stage whisper, from behind a blackberry screen. We pause for lunch, and laugh at our unhandy efforts. See, here is a sherry flask. We cannot catch him, but we will drink his health, and pay him some generous tribute.

What ho! Sir Merry,
Not that? not this?
Is there never a dainty
Can promise you bliss ?

Here comes a ripple
And there a calm,
But he simply passes
Without alarm.

So sure in fleetness,
So pertly wise,

He seems for sweetness

From alien skies.

We praise and laugh

For he has no match,

We can love and long,
But we cannot catch.

Till lo! at last

I have found his lure, Lo! he leaps up bold,

And we make him sure.

Else doubts arise,

As I whip and sing.

No fish glides by

But a faery thing.

What an eery motion
And easy way!

Tis a cherub's gait,

But the heart of a fay.

Dace are by no means to be scorned as table fish. How could they fail to be sweet eating, when their own tastes are so pellucid and aerial? A fine dish of them fried in delicate fats, as soon as the happy angler comes home, make a royal banquet, with a suspicion of vinegar, a little cress, and some brown bread and butter. You could not do better, believe me, if they were troutlets which hissed and spat in the pan. A little white wine-Chablis shall we say-goes well with them. Indeed, there is a proper vintage for every kind of fish that swims, but to enlarge upon this theme would be either to speak to ears too gross to understand it, or else it would be to insult the fine spirits to whom this knowledge is native and instinctive.

The meditative angler, especially while he is trying some new fetch for the girlish dace, may do well to reflect that the fish reflect not insignificantly the types of his acquaintance. Is not this little dace, like lively young Dashling, who coxed the Queen's eight? I see the very man inpiscate. He ran and boxed too, did Dashling, far beyond his inches, and if I remember rightly, became an explorer in Africa, where he was

eaten of lions. perch in my basket, reminds me of Dollardson, in his rich waistcoats, whom none could ignore or forget. He took a good degree, and became a barrister, renowned for his bullying and sharp cross-examinings. Poor old Dough, now the mild-eyed, perpetual curate of Ramsbotham Minor, who lived in cheap lodgings in Walton Street, and belonged to the unattached, he was a good, but timid roach. He hated extremes did Dough, and had a sad earnestness about him. That wide-eyed fellow, we always thought so lacking in taste-Fallowfield, of Lincoln, I mean also took Orders and everything else he could get he was actually made chaplain to Lord Earlscourt, and is now a rotund Canon in the wilds of somewhere. He is the very embodiment of a chub, a two-pound chub. Sallow old Heavyside the solicitor, a quiet family man, with a thick ring and stupid sons, he is a tench. He ought to have been a physician by rights, but he fattens upon his diet of deeds. Call upon him at his office and see him slowly grope in the twilight among his despatch boxes. How he rubs his fat fingers along the red tape! Beckling of the blue blood,

This pushing, practical