Who among you, dear readers, can appreciate the intense delight of grassing your first big fish after a nine-months’ fast? All first sensations have their special pleasure; but none can be named, in a small way, to beat this of the first fish of the season. The first clean leg-hit for four in your first match at Lord’s—the grating of the bows of your racing-boat against the stern of the boat ahead in your first race—the first half-mile of a burst from the cover-side in November, when the hounds in the field ahead may be covered in a tablecloth, and no one but the huntsman and a top sawyer or two lies between you and them—the first brief after your call to the bar, if it comes within the year—the sensations produced by these are the same in kind; but cricket, boating, getting briefs, even hunting, lose their edge as time goes on. But the first fish comes back as fresh as ever, or ought to come, if all men had their rights, once in a season. So, good luck to the gentle craft and its professors, and may the Fates send us much into their company! The trout-fisher, like the landscape-painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude, nature, and his own thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow-men. XLIX. How many spots in life are there which will bear comparison with the beginning of a college boy’s second term at Oxford? So far as external circumstances are concerned, it seems hard to know what a man could find to ask for at that period of his life, if a fairy godmother were to alight in his rooms and offer him the usual three wishes. In our second term we are no longer freshmen, and begin to feel ourselves at home, while both “smalls” and “greats” are sufficiently distant to be altogether ignored =if= we are that way inclined, or to be looked forward to with confidence that the game is in our own hands if we are reading men. Our financial position—unless we have exercised rare ingenuity in involving ourselves—is all that heart can desire; we have ample allowances paid in quarterly to the university bankers without thought or trouble of ours, and our credit is at its zenith. It is a part of our recognized duty to repay the hospitality we have received as freshmen; and all men will be sure to come to our first parties, to see how we do the thing; it will be our own fault if we do not keep them in future. We have not had time to injure our characters to any material extent with the authorities of our own college, or of the university. Our spirits are never likely to be higher, or our digestions better. These, and many other comforts and advantages, environ the fortunate youth returning to Oxford after his first vacation; thrice fortunate, however, if it is Easter term to which he is returning; for that Easter term, with the four days’ vacation,