From the frontispiece we start, and after perambulating the book, to the frontispiece we return. "A day's fishing" will then be wondrously intelligible, and ought to be regarded with an angler's love, and an angler's pride. The picture from which the engraving is taken has been long familiar to us. Who painted it? At the left-hand corner of the plate the artist's name is legible enough; but there is much more, besides the name, printed in sympathetic ink which is visible only to the eye of the initiated. A word in thine ear, gentlest of piscatorial readers! The skill of the pencil is the animated reflection of the skill of the fishing rod. Nothing finny has the painter drawn which the angler has not killed. On the canvass his faithful brush has placed nothing which his success as an angler has not enabled him to observe for himself, to mark, and to daguerreotype in his inmost soul. No graceful outline has he traced; no gorgeous bulk has he stretched out in massive breadth or wavy length; no small head has he delicately curved; no, flood of light has he poured on gleaming panoply of interwoven scales of gold and silver; no shifting ray of exquisite colour has he caught in the very instant of brilliant evanescence; no purple spot or crimson star has he made to shine with distinctive brightness on the flank; no aureate or orange tint has he permitted to fade away along the body into pearly whiteness; no fin quivers; no tail curls; no gill is muddy red; no eye is lustreless,--without or beyond the bidding, the teaching, the guarantee, and express image of nature. Pity it is that we should not feel at liberty to say a word or two of other matters--of a happy temper, which has cheered us with its mellow sunshine on many a raw and cloudy day; or of a richly-stored mind, which, when fish were sulky, has often made the lagging hours spin on with jocund speed. Almost, under this hot bright sky, we are tempted, unbidden, to enter the studio, and ask to share with yon sequestered stags the shelter of the favourite pines. But we dare not; for we know the man as well as the artist and angler. We know both the anglers. It is, in sooth, fitting that GILES should illustrate STODDART. Is not angling cruel? Now, before attempting any responsive observation, be so good as to read the following impetuous passage:--