stronger than himself.  I naturally attempt to regain this fly, unjustly withheld from me.  The fish gets tired and weak in his lawless endeavours to deprive me of it.  I take advantage of his weakness, I own, and drag him, somewhat loth, to the shore, when one rap on the back of the head ends him in an instant.  If he is a trout, I find his stomach distended with flies.  That beautiful one called the May fly, who is by nature almost ephemeral—­who rises up from the bottom of the the shallows, spreads its light wings, and flits in the sunbeam in enjoyment of its new existence—­no sooner descends to the surface of the water to deposit its eggs, than the unfeeling fish, at one fell spring, numbers him prematurely with the dead.  You see, then, what a wretch a fish is; no ogre is more bloodthirsty, for he will devour his nephews, nieces, and even his own children, when he can catch them; and I take some credit for having shown him up.  Talk of a wolf, indeed a lion, or a tiger!  Why, these, are all mild and saintly in comparison with a fish!  What a bitter fright must the smaller fry live in!  They crowd to the shallows, lie hid among the weeds, and dare not say the river is their own.  I relieve them of their apprehensions, and thus become popular with the small shoals.  When we see a fish quivering upon dry land, he looks so helpless without arms or legs, and so demure in expression, adding hypocrisy to his other sins, that we naturally pity him; then kill and eat him, with Harvey sauce, perhaps.  Our pity is misplaced,—­the fish is not.  There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name of Salmo ferox. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and give him the coup-de-grace.  Is this cruel?  Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff.”—­P. 83.

Mr Scrope is known as an accomplished artist as well as an experienced angler, and we need not now to tell our readers that he is also a skilful author.  It does not fall to the lot of all men to handle with equal dexterity the brush, the pen, and the rod—­to say nothing of the rifle—­still less of the leister, under cloud of night.  There is much in the present volume to interest even those who are so unfortunate as to have never seen either, grilse or salmon, except as pupils or practitioners in the silver-fork school.  His reminiscences of his own early life and manlier years, under the soubriquet of Harry Otter, are pleasantly told, and his adventurous meetings with poachers and painters are amusing in themselves, as well as instructive in their tendency to illustrate, not only the deeper mysteries of piscatorial art, but the life and conversation of the amphibious people who dwell by the sides of rivers.  His first arrival in “fair Melrose,” the moonlight lustre of which was then unsung, is thus described—­