his back, as Paris's quiver hung over his shoulder broad, was suspended a fish-basket; an iron blade of a foot or so in length formed the end of his rod; and, as if he had been afraid of the disciples of the gentle Rebecca, he bore an instrument something between a Highland claymore and a reaping-hook; and as we looked on his accoutrements, we thought we would not be a trout in such a neighbourhood on any consideration. Escape must be impossible for everything with fins, from a thirty-pound salmon to a minnow. As we got near him, he handled his rod with a skill and dexterity that left the young waterman far behind in the management of his oars; and, after a whisk or too in the upper air, he deposited the hook and line, not on the ripple in the middle of the Usk, but on the bough of an elm-tree. "Here's a mess!" he said, with a half-despairing, half-angry look at the entanglement. He pulled, and it seemed firmer at every tug. We approached to render what aid we could. "Here's a mess!" again he said. "You can scarcely call it a kettle of fish," was our sympathizing reply; and by the aid of crooked sticks to hold the bough with, and the warlike weapon, which cut off some of the branches, the hook was regained, the fly found uninjured, and with mutual good wishes we each took off his several way. There seems a good deal of amateur fishing in this country. In the course of our walk to the bridge, we saw three or four individuals flogging the water with great energy, who had evidently been fitted out in Bond Street, or who were perhaps taking out the value of the dresses in which they had enacted piscators at the fancy ball; but their success, we are sorry to say, was in no degree proportioned to the completeness of their preparations; and we suspect that people with less adornments, and a much more scanty apparatus of flies and fish-baskets, are the real discoverers of the treasures of the deep in the shape of trout and sewin. This latter fish, the sewin, we may add in passing, is a luxury of which the Usk has great reason to boast; for it is better than any thing we remember of the salmon kind, except the inimitable grilses at Stirling. On returning from the sale, with the carriage loaded with our purchases, we disposed our new acquisitions in the different rooms, and laid ourselves out for a few weeks' enjoyment of the blest retirement--friend to life's decline--which we had struggled so hard to gain, and which now looked so satisfying in every point.