PHYS.—You are severe on Cockney fishermen, and, I suppose, would apply to _them only_, the observation of Dr. Johnson, which on a former occasion you would not allow to be just: “Angling is an amusement with a stick and a string; a worm at one end, and a fool at the other.” And to yourself you would apply it with this change: “a fly at one end, and a philosopher at the other.” Yet the pleasure of the Cockney Angler appears to me of much the same kind, and perhaps more continuous than yours; and he has the happiness of constant occupation and perpetual pursuit in as high a degree as you have; and if we were to look at the real foundations of your pleasure, we should find them, like most of the foundations of human happiness—vanity or folly. I shall never forget the impression made upon me some years ago, when I was standing on the pier at Donegal, watching the flowing of the tide: I saw a lame boy of fourteen or fifteen years old, very slightly clad, that some persons were attempting to stop in his progress along the pier; but he resisted them with his crutches, and, halting along, threw himself from an elevation of five or six feet, with his crutches, and a little parcel of wooden boats, that he carried under his arm, on the sand of the beach. He had to scramble or halt at least 100 yards, over hard rocks, before he reached the water, and he several times fell down and cut his naked limbs on the bare stones. Being in the water, he seemed in an ecstacy, and immediately put his boats in sailing order, and was perfectly inattentive to the counsel and warning of the spectators, who shouted to him, that he would be drowned. His whole attention was absorbed by his boats. He had formed an idea, that one should outsail the rest, and when this boat was foremost he was in delight; but if any one of the others got beyond it he howled with grief; and once I saw him throw his crutch at one of the unfavoured boats. The tide came in rapidly—he lost his crutches, and would have been drowned, but for the care of some of the spectators: he was however wholly inattentive to any thing save his boats. He is said to be quite insane and perfectly ungovernable, and will not live in a house, or wear any clothes, and his whole life is spent in this one business—making and managing a fleet of wooden boats, of which he is sole admiral. How near this mad youth is to a genius, a hero, or to an angler, who injures his health and risks his life by going into the water as high as his middle, in the hope of catching a fish which he sees rise, though he already has a pannier full.