of trout in Meggat-water. {6} The days of guileless fish and fabulous draughts of trout are over.  No sportsman need take three large baskets to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six dozen of trout.  The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be raised too highly by these stories.  Sport has become much more difficult in these times of rapidly growing population.  It is a pleasant sight to see the weavers spending their afternoons beside the Tweed; it is such a sight as could not be witnessed by the closely preserved rivers of England.  But the weavers have taught the trout caution, and the dyes and various pollutions of trade have thinned their numbers.  Mr. Ruskin sees no hope in this state of things; he preaches, in the spirit of old Hesiod, that there is no piety in a race which defiles the “holy waters.”  But surely civilization, even if it spoil sport and degrade scenery, is better than a state of things in which the laird would hang up his foes to an iron ring in the roof.  The hill of Cowden Knowes may be a less eligible place for lovers’ meetings than it was of old.  But in those times the lord of Cowden Knowes is said by tradition to have had a way of putting his prisoners in barrels studded with iron nails, and rolling them down a brae.  This is the side of the good old times which should not be overlooked.  It may not be pleasant to find blue dye and wool yarn in Teviot, but it is more endurable than to have to encounter the bandit Barnskill, who hewed his bed of flint, Scott says, in Minto Crags.  Still, the reading of the “Rivers of Scotland” leaves rather a sad impression on the reader, and makes him ask once more if there is no way of reconciling the beauty of rude ages with the comforts and culture of civilization.  This is a question that really demands an answer, though it is often put in a mistaken way.  The teachings of Mr. Ruskin and of his followers would bring us back to a time when printing was not, and an engineer would have been burned for a wizard. {8} But there is a point at which civilization and production must begin to respect the limits of the beautiful, on which they so constantly encroach.  Who is to settle the limit, and escape the charge of being either a dilettante and a sentimentalist on the one hand, or a Philistine on the other?

SALMON-FISHING.

Salmon-fishing for this season is over, and, in spite of the fresh and open weather, most anglers will feel that the time has come to close the fly-book, to wind up the reel, and to consign the rod to its winter quarters.  Salmon-fishing ceases to be very enjoyable when the snaw broo, or melted snow from the hilltops, begins to mix with the brown waters of Tweed or Tay; when the fallen leaves hamper the hook; and when the fish are becoming sluggish, black, and the reverse of comely.  Now the season of retrospect commences, the time of the pleasures of memory, and