Who among you, dear readers, can appreciate the intense delight of grassing your first big fish after a nine-months’ fast? All first sensations have their special pleasure; but none can be named, in a small way, to beat this of the first fish of the season. The first clean leg-hit for four in your first match at Lord’s—the grating of the bows of your racing-boat against the stern of the boat ahead in your first race—the first half-mile of a burst from the cover-side in November, when the hounds in the field ahead may be covered in a tablecloth, and no one but the huntsman and a top sawyer or two lies between you and them—the first brief after your call to the bar, if it comes within the year—the sensations produced by these are the same in kind; but cricket, boating, getting briefs, even hunting, lose their edge as time goes on. But the first fish comes back as fresh as ever, or ought to come, if all men had their rights, once in a season. So, good luck to the gentle craft and its professors, and may the Fates send us much into their company! The trout-fisher, like the landscape-painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude, nature, and his own thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow-men.