tear trembling on my eyelid. If it fell down my cheek I may not tell; if it was brushed ashamedly aside I will not tell. It came from the heart, and I think went back there, and that it was its influence which made me feel so much in love with all the world that happy evening.

He is a good old soul, is Briggs, and hath infected our impulsive nature with rhythmical, we shall not dare to call them poetical, tendencies. Yet there is something so truly connected with poetry in all that appertains to angling, that we believe that none without a leaven of its aspirations can enjoy the sport in its highest degree of affording pleasure. Many a creel-carrying wight, fishing down a running river, knows not that it is the poetry of nature that is so recreating his heart. Now, if any imaginative son of the rod desires to fly his pen upon a sporting essay, we shall give him a text. Tennyson, in his poem, "The Miller's Daughter," gives a complete sentence in four words, no further aid lending to the imagination:-"THEN LEAPT A TROUT.” Now, then, here are a great poet's simple words. Give us the amplification, O young litterateur, O would-be heir to the mantle of John Wilson (whose grandeur of lineaments yet fills our eye, whose grasp of the hand seems yet to dwell upon our fingers)! Give us the why, the wherefore, the incident surrounded with the accidents, the light and shade, the simile, the peroration! Much has been written on a less fertile subject, and you may be assured it is not for nothing the poet-laureate whistles "THEN LEAPT A TROUT!"

The rising tide is always hailed with pleasure by the

hand-line fisher, and we may suppose an ardent lover or fond husband so hastening to inform his fair companion of the fact

THE FLOWING TIDE.

The tide is just now on the turn, love,
The cable hangs quite slack;

The sun, which your face did so burn, love,

As the boat swings slips round by your back;
There's silence unbroken; no ripple or wave
Break in on the beach they so love to lave,
When the current goes on careering.

I am sure that the tide now flows, love,
The cable feels the strain;

See how that Medusa past goes, love,

The joyous waves sparkle again;

They come with a leap, and hark to the knock
Which each of them gives with its little shock-shock,
Our skiff to them gently veering!

A blue arch is over the sea, love,

A dark line chords the firth,

'Tis the sea-breeze that brings health to thee, love!
Let's hail it with song and with mirth;

For there's something all like in an incoming tide,
It giveth, not taketh; and promise and pride
Swell up on the breast of its heaving.

O could we thus pass all our days, love;
Did the waters of life ever swell;

With songs and with murmurs of praise, love,
How happily then should we dwell;

Hope's anchor deep fixed, and each rippling rise
Of the fresh jocund sea giving light to thine eyes;
With no fears, and one steadfast look up to the skies,
Giving all we require in believing!