3 TU DUNMOW HUN.ST.C. CHESTERR.r4 34 23 1 32 6 48 7 20 49 7 52 8 26 s7 28 24 2 r4 31 25 2 59 2936 1710 10 10 42 6 F Coleshill Fair [spawn s7 31 26 2 7 S Grayling, Roach, Chub, and Dacer4 27 27 8 Sunday after Ascension. 9 M TULLOW R. 10 TU NEWMARKET SECOND SPRING MS7 38 N s7 34 28 3 r4 24 29 3 3211 1311 39 0 5 11 W SHREWSBURY R. BEVERLEY R.r4 21 1 9 a 27 2 18 2 36 12TH Totness Fair [WINSLOW R.S7 41 210 13 F Ripon Fair r4 18 311 14 S Nottingham Fair 15 Shit Sunday. 16 M YORK S. M. SHIFFNALL R. s7 47 6 0 17 TU MANCHEST. R. GORHAMBURY R.r4 11 7 0 9 7 56 8 31 26 9 99 45 4210 2010 55 011 2411 52 22 Trinity Sunday. 23 M STOKESLEY R. CASTLETOWN R. r4 s7 59 F rises. 1 36 2 0 015 9 a 46 2 22 3 43 11610 33 3 2 3 22 r4 s8 30 M Cranbrook Fair 31 TU SETTLING DAY AT TATTERSALL'S. r3 5521 0 53 4 57 5 17 Newmarket Second S. 10 | Newton. 3 Shrewsbury Forest (Barking side) 3 | Beverley Ollerton... 3 Winslow .... .... ........ 5 39 6 2 8 6 22 6 48 16 Stokesley, Yorkshire INDEX TO THE CLOSING OF STAKES. 11 Epping Town 16 Epsom THE FISHERMAN. BY SYLVANUS SWANQUILL. BLESSED, beautiful May! Sabbath month of the year! sacred to love, and joy, and hope, and every glad emotion that hearts are capable of feeling! how delightful now to pronounce thy name again—to know thee once more among us to say "It is May!" Who can speak those glad words, who can say, "It is May," and resist the desire to rush into the midst of the fields and woods, clamber the steep hills, dive into the "bosky dells," wander wildly by the babbling streams, loiter dreamily by the roaring waterfall! For our own part, we are lost creatures for the whole month from the very earliest day that the almanac announces May E. St. Philip and St. James, we are changed beings, no use now to ask us to dine or dance-we are engaged for the whole month: tariffs and income taxes are now nothing to us-coffee and leather are not to be thought of: violets and buttercups are all we have time to think about. Our very creditors now may come with their simulated friendly double knocks: we are "not at home." It is of no use trying to resist the influence of the time: we have no power to do so: our heart would break in the attempt— as those of young ladies (are said to) do when their loves-at-first-sight are thwarted by the tyrannical interference of adamant-hearted uncles. With us it is a decided May-nia-excuse the wantonness of the pun -being May we must be allowed to have our fling without let or hindrance. Nothing too fantistic for us now-nothing too egregious for such a decided May-homedan as we are. May-May-May! I could write the word till the month came round again. Blessings on it! What a beautiful word too! How bland and sweetly it falls from the tongue, like a leaf dropped from a rosebud. May-May! it is as fair a word among month-names, as Mary among girl-names almost the same, in fact: : -as sweet, as soft, as delicate, as dear. But let us be amongst the fields-away without more ado, rod in hand and creel at back-away among the glorious, gorgeous meadows, which are so bright and full of blossoms now, that it is just as much as we can do to tell whether they are really meadows or only flower gardens. We said " rod in hand," for of course we are fishermen not of the chub-dapping, roach twitching, stationary, stick-inthe-mud sort, who have drawn so much odium on the gentle craft by their sleepy, stupid, cork-and-quill system of sport-if sport it may be called-but of the thorough-paced, wide-awake, look-alive, go-ahead clan, to whom motion is as necessary as life; whose noble quarry is the trout, the salmon, the jack, the grayling; whose haunts are the glen, the ravine, the arrowy stream-side, the gushing rapid, the roaring waterfall, the path among the rocks, the labyrinth in the forest dell. This is our delight-roaming, roaming-walking through landscapes as you would turn over the leaves of a picture book-something fresh at every page-quiet, bland, sleepy views now-now, rugged, rocky, Salvator-like scenes, whose smoothest feature is a prostrate mountain or a riven forest-now meadows all spangled with the fairest blossoms of spring-now rocky gorges, where "Devil's Bridges and "Mauvais Pas" meet you at every step. What excitement, what joy is here! joy only felt in all its joyfulness by the fisherman; for he is there for an object-it is his home: others look upon these things only as a sight, a show; but he he is part and parcel of them he is as necessary to the landscape as the stream and the mountain themselves. Your tourist is an alien in the picture he is a blot on the scene: he is a living not-in-keeping in the composition. We look upon him as a fly upon a painting: we mut blow him off before we can enter into any enjoyment of its beauty. We are like the countryman and the crowd in London streets: we must wait till the tourist is gone by. : Not so of the fisher: he, as we have before said, is a necessary part of the landscape. He is as necessary to the landscape as the sun that lights it. He forms part of its life, (who ever loved a dead landscape ?). The clouds moving in the sky, the river moving in its channel, the fisherman moving on terra firma-these are all and equally necessary to the vitality of the scene; and without these the whole poetry would be gone; would be as verses written in a lost language; as hieroglyphics carved on cold granite. We are among the glorious, old, long-remembered, dearly-beloved scenes now and there is not an object within the horizon that is not familiar to us. Great and small, noble and ignoble, we know and love them all-that mountain, that gate-post-that forest side, that steppingstone in the streamlet. From this old, weather-beaten stile, what a burst of beauty! meadow, river, wood, hill, cloud, sky! the meadows full of life and joy-joy of birds, joy of beasts, and joy of men, for whom all were created! the river, winding between the green hills, here blue and gushing, there still and white under a cloak of myriad blossoms; every wave, every blossom instinct with life; and every life a separate mystery! the woods, leafed in for shade and shelter to its endless tribes of wild creatures, winged and wingless! the hills, rising peak over peak as far as eye can reach, with their green vallies between, from whose farthest summit new hills may be descried and new vallies may be numbered, all full of wonder and beauty and never-ending life! the clouds, mere vapours indeed, yet how beautiful! in form, in colour, in motion! and then the sky, the bright medium between us and the great void, the incomprehensible space, the wondrous no-world, the everlasting gloom-how admirable the wisdom, how beneficent the providence that hid from us the dark obscurity, and in its stead |