The sketch of fisher-life in the _Antiquary_ applies as well to the fisher-folk of to-day as to those of sixty years since. This is demonstrable at Newhaven; which, though fortunate in having a pier as a rendezvous for its boats, thus admitting of a vast saving of time and labour, is yet far behind inland villages in point of sanitary arrangements. There is in the “town” an everlasting scent of new tar, and a permanent smell of decaying fish, for the dainty visitors who go down to the village from Edinburgh to partake of the fish-dinners for which it is so celebrated. Up the narrow closes, redolent of “bark,” we see hanging on the outside stairs the paraphernalia of the fisherman—his “properties,” as an actor would call them; nets, bladders, lines, and oilskin unmentionables, with dozens of pairs of those particularly blue stockings that seem to be the universal wear of both mothers and maidens. On the stair itself sit, if it be seasonable weather, the wife and daughters, repairing the nets and baiting the lines—gossiping of course with opposite neighbours, who are engaged in a precisely similar pursuit; and to-day, as half a century ago, the fishermen sit beside their hauled-up boats, in their white canvas trousers and their Guernsey shirts, smoking their short pipes, while their wives and daughters are so employed, seeming to have no idea of anything in the shape of labour being a duty of theirs when ashore. In the flowing gutter which trickles down the centre of the old village we have the young idea developing itself in plenty of noise, and adding another layer to the incrustation of dirt which it seems to be the sole business of these children to collect on their bodies. These juvenile fisher-folk have already learned from the mudlarks of the Thames the practice of sporting on the sands before the hotel windows in the expectation of being rewarded with a few halfpence. “What’s the use of asking for siller before they’ve gotten their denner?” we once heard one of these precocious youths say to another, who was proposing to solicit a bawbee from a party of strangers.