From Longman's Magazine.

AN ANGLER'S SUMMER EVE. The hour of sunset in the fulness of the summer is specially dear to the flyfisher who loves the most contemplative phase of "the poetry of angling." It marks the commencement of evening fishing, which is full of a charm of its own that only anglers can appreciate. Nor all even of them, for there are some whose excess of energy most delights in the daylight fishing with the dry fly, a system which necessitates much stalking, creeping, crouching, casting in different positions, and general muscular activity.

For the old-fashioned fisherman accustomed to the wet fly, however, the angler's summer eve is the most fascinating period of the day. There is a mysterious charm when, to use the wonderful phrase from "Macbeth," "light thickens" about the familiar stream, the trees, meads, and hedgerows, the sighing rushes, the thorn bushes, and ancient willows which here and there stand on the banks. Things and sounds, commonplace in the garish light of day, assume a certain eerie romance in the gloaming. The ripple of the river has a rhythm unlike that of the earlier hours, the call of the distant bird, the buzz of the beetle's drony flight, the murmur of the soft breeze through the rushes, the far off village sounds-all these as twilight succeeds the sunset, have an effect which is outside their actual existence.

Only a minority have enjoyed to any extent the charm of evening fly-fishing. For it usually happens that when the trout who have been indolent, each in his favorite deep, during the blazing hours of the long summer day commence the sunset rise, the angler has to pack up and start for the train which is to carry him and his meadow memories to the din of London. Those, therefore, who either have no pressing occupations, or who live by some fair stream, are they who most appreciate this reposeful time and its uncloying delight. Full often has the evening fly-fisher captured the big trout who has disdained the lures of different ac

complished hands during the day, and who figures in their dreams.

At sunset, especially when as generally a light air ripples the water, the large trout waken from their summer somnolence in their crystal Castle of Indolence, and "dreams that wave before the half-shut eye" which they probably have of a kind, and get an appetite. Then do they leave their respective deeps; and usually they shift their position, coming to the opposite side of water to that occupied during the day.

They begin to rise at such ephemeral life as dots the surface of the stream. Not noisily-the splash is very gentle, though the surroundings as the light grows dimmer make it sound more clear than by day. Here and there the faint noise is heard, and thrills the fisherman's heart like a trumpet sound. The best and biggest fish, veritable monarchs of the brook, are now on the feed. And big as they are the sound of their rise is less than that of the small fry during the day, a gentle splash round which the circles widen, which the angler cannot see, alone betokens the trout's activity. And with joyous heart the angler with the evening before him, and no thought of time or trains to worry him, gets his tackle ready.

While he is doing so his eye and ear drink in delight of their own. The "flame-bright owl" has come out to feed, and dimly its white form is seen stealing with noiseless flight round the hedgerows, while occasionally its screech startles the silence. Late swallows still skim over the river, and sleeplessly wheeling by occasionally utter the shrill note that some rustics dislike to hear as much as the barnowl's. Points of light, some green, some white, appear in profusion on the banks under the hedges as the glowworms light each other. And the birdmusic is more varied than those who only know the mead and stream by day ever imagine, thinking indeed that "all the air a solemn stillness holds."

Far and near amid the grass the ubiquitously puzzling, rusty-voiced

corncrake is resonant. Here and there the note of the partridge just settling down suggests visions of September. Fidgety pheasants crow from the distant copse. Amid their staccato utterances the ear catches a liquid gush of melody which is sometimes mistaken for that of the nightingale. But it is that of the shy blackcap, which in thickest foliage will sing till at any rate the middle of July. From a big ash-tree which stands by the meadow gate a thrush is fluting his varied strain as a farewell to day, and nothing is more exquisite unless it be the rapt ecstatic song of the blackbird at dawn, which few indeed have heard but which is unequalled by any of his later music.

From the maze of vegetation, which is luxuriant at parts of the river's edge, a whirring continuous note is heard, which is pleasant to the angler's ears, though little music be therein, for it resembles the sound of his reel when a good fish is running the line out. This shows the proximity of the grasshopper lark, shyest of tiny birds, a little greenish brown creature which is almost ventriloquial in its effects, and which threads the most intertwined maze of stems and branches with the utmost ease and swiftness. But beyond this line of scrub the tall reeds are waving. And at this hour there seems to be a feathered concert within their green labyrinth. Lark, linnet, sparrow, chaffinch, swallow, redstart, and greenfinch appear to be vying with each other in short, hurrying passages, yet these are but the sounds of one little tireless bird, which when it pauses will sing again if a stone be thrown into reeds the sedgewarbler which begins its fullest carolling what time

the

Pale twilight draws of sober hue With fingers soft and dipt in dew, O'er Nature's face a shadowy veil. However delightful, therefore, the golden hours of sunlight and the full glories of the summer day to the angler, and mostly associated these since Walton's time with his pleasures, the twilight hour has its own especial

charms, and the evening fisher has equally delightful surroundings. More than this, to come from poetry to prose, the best trout are usually obtained at this time. The complicated art of the dry fly is not here required. This is a recommendation. For beautiful as that art is, and highly successful when mastered (which is no speedy achievement) for educated trout in a southern stream, it is yet the art of a minority. But your old-fashioned wet-fly angler may here console himself, and his creel will with luck be very satisfactory in its contents. The fly allowed to sink just beneath the water will spell success. There is a small but effectual list of flies which for such fishing are most appropriate. Such is the alder, the brackenclock, the black gnat, the white hackle, and the blue dun. From our own experience we will add the red palmer, the white moth, and coachman. On a clear night the black gnat or palmer, on a cloudy one the white moth or hackle are indicated.

Not very far from the bank do the fish rise in the evening. A shorter cast, therefore, is as effective as the long one of daylight. And this is lucky, for in the increasing obscurity one must cast rather by sound than sight. Dimly the rise is perceived, and lightly the fly is dropped; allowed to sink and so to swim. At the commencement near sunset, when sky and water are equally clear, the black gnat or palmer, by force of contrast, will attract most fish. We speak here of particularly bright evenings. As the time wears on and the light lessens these are exchanged for one of the white flies. On some evenings the moth is not a favorite. Fish seem to run after the small insects. On others these are neglected, and the white moth or hackle briskly risen to. And especially if there be clouds overhead and a sprinkling of rain. Trout are very whimsical at all times, except in the mayfly season (though even then they will occasionally neglect the artificial imitation), but the black and white flies in very bright or very dark weather, as the case may be, are far more successful

than many more fashionable and modern ones. But the patient angler changes his fly after he has used it to no effect for a fair time not long. You may throw a dozen times over a rising grayling without disturbing him, and he will very likely take the fly at the last throw. But you cannot cast over a feeding trout more than about three times without sending him off, if he does not like the lure.

However, be the fly what it may, our angler lets it remain quietly in the stream. The sedgewarbler still carols, the water-vole now and then drops with a little "plop" from his bank-hole into the stream, the corncrakes are vociferous, and there are tiny splashes at irregular intervals in the stream, which to the fisherman surpass in music every other sound. With every nerve thrilling he keeps the line at the precise degree of tautness necessary. He cannot see clearly the end of it, therefore his fingers have as it were on this occasion to act as substitutes for eyes. With the most acute perception in those finger tips for every sensation in the line he waits until the fly has drifted with the current as far as is manageable, then it is swept back and again lightly cast, and the line will in a few moments, with ordinary luck, be tightened.

An evening-feeding fish is generally a good one, but he does not then rise violently. A gentle check and thrill simultaneously with the faint distant splash or ripple electrically inform the angler that he has hooked a fish. And now, though the first stage of his angling has been of the most reposeful kind, this one is full of excitement. Under the stimulus of the steel barb the trout is as full of activity as during the day he was of indolence; and playing a good fish in the twilight is a task which demands not only skill and patience, but a peculiar delicacy of hand. Local knowledge at this hour counts enormously. Herein are those who dwell by the river particularly fortunate.

The fish as a rule darts out into midstream and runs out the line accordingly. In the darkness the end of that

line is not to be seen, and the fish's course has to be felt and guessed. Therefore the tyro or even the old hand who is a stranger to the course of the river and its features, is at much disadvantage at this stage. Our angler, however, comes under neither of these definitions. His dexterous hand seems all nerves-some of them optic onesand instinctively feels each direction which the big trout will erratically take. The fish slackens speed and sulks under the bank; the line is reeled up like lightning, for if that were to slacken too the trout would beat the angler. Then he swims round and round at a slow, puzzling pace. Anon he comes with much flouncing and splashing towards the water's surface, the sedge-warbler singing more loudly in accompaniment. These leaps and bounds of the trout make the most critical moments for the anxious angler on the bank. But science and patience tell. The fish's efforts grow feebler, and the fisherman has planted himself at a shelving place whose configuration he would know as well in midnight darkness as at brightest noon. Thither slowly with always light line he coaxes the trout, who with an occasional defiant flap is at last gently brought on the incline, and thence by a clever movement on the grass Io triumphe!

And now stooping over him the happy angler by the dim light examines his prize. A glorious threepounder, in splendid color and condition, pink spotted on his silver sides! Such a fish as might be seen during the long hours of sunshine tantalizing the eager anglers on the bank, but who would then have despised all their lures. Not to every artist, however enthusiastic, is it given to land such a fish at this hour, however plucky he may be in hooking him. His captor may well feel proud, as, plucking a handful of the rich grass, he places it in his creel, and lays his prize gently, as if he loved him, on its softness.

And now quietude restored, the rise recommences here and there as the distant soft splashes show, and the angler, casting towards each sound, his hear

ing more acute than by day, resumes his sport. There is a sweetness in the air unknown to day. "The flowers a sweeter scent exhale." As the mists of night creep on they intensify the meadow odors. The humble and differ

ent grasses themselves, which the townsman looks on as all of one kind, something merely to tread on and make hay of, have their own delicate perfumes. There is the "weed," as he calls it, known as "dame's violet," which has a fragrance for those who stoop over it. The white evening campion is another. The hedgerows are beautiful with the wreaths and snowy flowers of the great bindweed, twining intricately among the crowded branches, and with feathery garlands of the wild clematis or prettily named traveller's joy. The river itself, could its floral wealth be seen, is a thing of beauty in its blossoms. Growing up amid rushes and the yellow iris the beautiful willow herb adorns the margin of the stream with its crimson blossoms, and at its slower bends that fairest of flowers, the white water-lily, though its ample snowy petals closed for the night, reposes on the surface of the water. Truly the evening fisher is surrounded by beauties, lonely and eerie as the time may seem to those who have no sympathy with the gloaming. When to these is added the satisfaction of basketing two or three brace of the best trout in the stream by the most skilful handling it will be seen that few, if any, of the pleasures of life surpass, if they equal, those which are to the initiated so perennially satisfying as making up the delight of an angler's summer eve.

F. G. WALTERS.

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importance to theology. reason why in that land, people had a habit of writing on a durable material, and where nothing perishes of decay caused by climatic influences, we should not find a copy of a Gospel much earlier than any manuscript we possess, or better still, a document supplying independent evidence as to the life, preaching, and execution of our Lord. Pilate himself may have written to a friend in Egypt an account of an incident which, whether it impressed his own mind or not-and the Roman mind, which was eminently proud, would have been impressed by a trial in which broad Roman ideas yielded to those of the locality-moved his wife to an interference which must have been most unusual; or any centurion of the many in the garrison of Palestine may have been interested in teaching which must have seemed to Romans so strange and different from experience, and may have described to comrades in Egypt his impressions. We know that centurions discussed the faith, and that one was a believer. Such a document would be invaluable, and there is no a priori reason for pronouncing its existence impossible, or even most improbable. Officials did write to one another; centurions were, we know, and as is only natural, interested both in Judaism and Christianity; and accident might preserve one letter of interest just as well as another. Nothing of the kind has been discovered yet, but the search for papyri has grown patient and minute, the stock begins to accumulate-large quantities of papyri have, for instance, been unearthed from a new locale, the rubbishheaps of Oxyrhynchus, a town of which the very name had been forgotten-and there is as much eagerness to discover Christian records as ancient copies of the classics. There is hope yet; and meanwhile the explorers have found, deciphered, and translated a paper of great literary interest, the page of a book which its authors believed, or affected to believe, contained "Sayings" actually uttered by Jesus of Nazareth. Whether the dis