John Donne, too, in a manner not unworthy of "Kit Marlowe," has the pretty conceit :

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run,
Warm'd by thine eyes more than the sun;
And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds;
Or, curious traitors, sleave silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes:

For thee thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.

There are some modern anglers who affect to despise the good old rules and maxims of the gentle art laid down by Izaak Walton. The indefatigable Hone has preserved in his “ "Every Day Book" a letter from a correfpondent who met a successful angler on that beautiful ftream in Derbyshire, the Dove, whose basket was filled with the trout which he had taken.

“I asked him,' fays the writer, if he had read "Walton's Complete Angler." Yes, he had it, and turning to me with an air of immense importance, faid, 'If he was alive now, he could

not take a fingle fifh.' 'No,' I replied, how is that? He could

take plenty in his day; and though I do not deny that there may have been great improvements in the art, yet skill then fuccessful would be equally fo now, unless there has been a revolution amongst the fish, and they have grown wifer.' 'Ay, there

you have

it,' he added; the fish are wiser, they won't take the same baits.' I instinctively glanced at the bait then upon the hook of my oracle, and-heaven and earth! it was Walton's favourite bait, the drake fly."

Whatever may be the cause, the sport of angling does not now as a general rule yield fuch good and profitable returns as in old times. At the old Sluice House, in comparatively modern days, fome good sport was to be had; now the genius loci fings,

Ye who with rod and line aspire to catch
Leviathans that swim within the stream
Of this famed River, now no longer New,
Yet still so called, come to the Sluice House.
Here largest gudgeon live, and fattest roach
Resort, and even barbel have been found.

Here, too, does sometimes prey the rav'ning shark

Of streams like this, that is to say, a jack.

If fortune aid ye, ye perchance shall find,

Upon an average within one day,

At least a fish or two; if ye do not,

This will I promise ye, that ye shall have

Most glorious nibbles; come then, haste ye here,

And with ye bring large stocks of baits and-patience.

87°

JOUSTS AND TOURNAMENTS.

E learn from Fitz Stephen that feven centuries ago it was the custom on every Sunday in Lent, immediately after

dinner, for " great crowds of young

Londoners, mounted on war horfes well

trained to perform the neceffary turnings and evolutions, to ride into the fields in distinct bands, armed, haftelibus ferro dempto, with fhields and headless lances; where they exhibited the reprefenta

tion of battles, and went through a variety of warlike exercises; at the fame time many of the young noblemen who had not received the honour of knighthood, came from the king's court, and from the houses of the great barons, to make trial of their skill in arms, the hope of victory animating their minds. The youth being divided into oppofite companies, encountered one another: in one place they fled, and others pursued, without being able to overtake them; in another place one of the bands overtook and overturned the other." Thefe diverfions in which the citizens indulged became afterwards the exclufive sport of the nobility,