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-- "It was late, and I looked forth on the tranquil scene from my window. The moonbeams played upon the distant hilltops, but the lower masses slept as yet in shadow; again the pale light caught the waters of the Tweed, the lapse of whose streams fell faintly on the ear, like the murmuring of a sea-shell. In front rose up the mouldering abbey, deep in shadow; its pinnacles, and buttresses, and light tracery, but dimly seen in the solemn mass. A faint light twinkled for a space among the tomb-stones, soon it was extinct, and two figures passed off in the shadow, who had been digging a grave even at that late hour. As the night advanced, a change began to take place. Clouds heaved up over the horizon; the wind was heard in murmurs; the rack hurried athwart the moon; and utter darkness fell upon river, mountain, and haugh. Then the gust swelled louder, and the storm struck fierce and sudden against the casement. But as the morrow dawned, though rain-drops still hung upon the leaf, the clouds sailed away, the sun broke forth, and all was fair and tranquil."--P. 97. The fisherman was sent for express, and his general garb and fly-bedizened hat, are soon portrayed; while the "waxing" of the Tweed, and how the Eildon Hills were of old cloven by the art of grammarye, conclude the fourth chapter, and bring us only to the hundredth page.