in waters. From my boyhood I still retain a sort of sneaking partiality for brooks, rivulets and milldams. Your mighty rivers, with their surrounding grandeur, fill my soul, like any other's, with awe and admiration; but the innocuous, retired brooks lay hold on my affections. Wanting they are, it is true in majesty and might, but about them, methinks, is more of playfulness and beauty. In the breast of a mill-dam is sympathy with even the touch of a swallow's wing, the springing up of a trout or the leaping in of a grasshopper. Of all streams too containing trout-while at confessing I may as well speak it out-with none am I better acquainted and perhaps more smitten, than with one of little note, which sometimes I visit in my vernal holidays, secreted in the heart of Cumberland county, in the State of Pennsylvania, known by the unpretending name of Big Spring. Thus named I imagine it has been from the potent but noiseless gush with which at its source it issues up from beneath the base of a woody hill, filling at once a mill-dam and putting in motion a grist mill only a few paces below. Indeed its whole pilgrimage, being northward and nearly three miles before it reaches the Conodoguinnet, is made up of dams at considerable distances, each backing up its water almost to the base of the next above; whereby, whilst in reality one of the most hard-working little streams in the county, it has imparted to it withal the appearance of indolent repose. Big Spring is it called throughout its course, I suppose, on account of its continued spring-like lucidness, and mayhap to distinguish it par excellence from other minor fonts oozing into it occasionally from its limestone ledgy sides. Above its last dam, that calm sheet of water, at any rate to an observer from its eastern bank, is the most instructive, bending around and reflecting the opposite graveyard, as, with its many slabs and headstones, it rises gently up towards the old stone church that tops the hill, behind which lies unseen and almost unheard, the little bustling village of Newville. As by the rivers of Babylon the sweet singers hanged their harps, brought from Judea, upon the willows in the midst thereof, so, not in sorrow but in gladness, not around the pendent but sprightly wilows and other trees along the banks of Big Spring, do I always feel disposed to throw, at least so far as suitable, derived from other sources, all my piscatory songs and associations. Apart from public travel for many years this stream had lain secreted, the turnpike road, then the great thoroughfare through the At present, valley, passing along some distance above its source. however, by the bridge on which rests the railway of later construction, it is sped over about a quarter of a mile above Newville. Across this the majority of passengers, on other things intent, are whirled unknowingly. By the watchful angler in the Spring, however, its proximity is ever sweetly felt. While the cars, at the depot hard by, stop for being replenished with wood and water, out he letteth himself carefully with his fishing accoutrements and tackle, and while standing before the inn adjoining he catcheth of its bright waters below and the tops of the willows near, delightsome glimpses, off whirring the while the cars and leaving him behind, he carroleth forth or whistleth to himself, in the plenitude of his joy, some such ode as this from the "Angling Remeniscences" of Stoddard: Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing! Are the emeralds of spring On the angler's trysting tree? Tell, sweet thrushes, tell to me! Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing! Round the angler's trysting tree? Up, sweet thrushes, up and see! Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing! Up, sweet thrushes, tell to me! Sing, sweet thrushes, forth and sing! To the flowery haunts of spring, Tell, sweet thrushes, tell to me! Are there flowers 'neath our willow tree? But "good wine needs no bush," and Big Spring needs no willows to draw customers after her trout. The fact is, she has always had too many customers for the safety and preservation of her fish. To protect these, therefore, many years ago public interference was necessary. Wherefore, then enacted it was by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the law continueth still in full force, that no angler shall cast a line into these waters save only during those four gentle, summer months, whose names are not roughened with an r. Moreover, as this was hardly sufficient, even during this favored season, the proprietors of mill-dams still extend their kind protection over certain select portions of these, within their jurisdiction, forbidding to angle therein all strollers save only themselves. To your fully equipt angler, however, I must say, with his landing-net, his ferules and his creels, and what not, who cometh up mayhap from Philadelphia, the hospitable proprietor of the mill-dam is ever gracious, revoking for the time all restrictions, and furnishing him with his flat-boat and every useful information besides, remarking, however, I must confess, to some bystander, when the bold aspirant has pushed off into the deep, that with such paraphernalia he never saw much harm done to the fishes. To the homebred fly-fisher, however, with his well-spliced rod, without any extra trappings, who is familiar with every nook and crook in the stream and the habits of the trout besides, he is not always so complaisant. Him, should he apply for his boat, he will often put off with excuses, saying that it is sadly out of repair, or, mayhap, that himself or some of his boys think of launching it out presently for fishing a little themselves. Among these domestic anglers stands pre-eminent, being six feet and some inches in his shoes, the portly colored gentleman ycleped Joe. Loitering along the stream he may be seen, of any pleasant summer day, with his rod in hand and so noisless in his tread that even the turtles, basking on the sunny sides of fallen logs protruded from the water's surface, do not care to edge themselves down sidelong into their protecting element as he passes by, so familiar has he become to their fancies. Fortunate is the zealous youth whom he receiveth under his tutelage, for he will certainly bring him forth in the end a complete fly-fisher. His first lessons he doth not permit his pupil to practice on the water; but taking him up into a high clover-field apart, he letteth him expend his fury, in the first place, on the clover-heads, to the alarm and scattering merely of the grasshoppers or, mayhap, of some startled hogs in the adjoining field. Then conducting him down again, his second exercises he putteth him through over some stagnant recess of the dam frequented only by bull-frogs and water-turtles. It is not till after his having acquired some agility of hand and delicacy of touch, that he permitteth him to tickle, with his properly adapted rod and fly, the surface of the water within whose depths are gamboling the wary trout. Some of the best anglers in the county, who visit this stream in its season, owe their present proficiency in a great measure to the first lessons in this way imparted by honest Joe, the colored Izaak Walton of Big Spring. For my own part, when I go a-fishing, I generally contrive to place myself under the care of one of the practised anglers of the neighborhood, some of whom I have the pleasure of reckoning among my choicest friends; and while he on the water performs the agile part of the business, as I am really "no fisher but a wellwisher of the game," I make out, however, on the bank to do the contemplative. Admirably adapted have I always found the stream, at any rate in the fishing season, from its fountain-head throughout, for inspiring sprightly thoughts and in some places also pensive. On the sequestered eastern bank especially, above the lowermost dam, it has often struck me that even Izaak Walton, were he still living and with us, would throw himself, in the spring season, with pleasure beneath its broad oaks, conning over some of his gravest madrigals. Not a shower nor a weeping willow would he need there to render him properly melancholy. The graveyard opposite would be sufficient. "Or we sometimes pass an hour That defends us from a shower, Making earth our pillow; Where we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath; Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented." Not painfully melancholy, however, on a placid summer's eve, are the thoughts suggested on that bank by the opposite graveyard and church. Indeed, on the contrary, as they are shone over by the mellow fading twilight and we look down at their reflected images in the water, our musings become pleasingly pensive. They are lighted up with joy and hope, and we can almost fancy that beneath the tombs we are permitted to have, through hallowed openings, a soft, refreshing glimpse into the secret, peaceful Hades of the blessed. W. M. N.* ART. X.-SARTORIUS ON THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST. 1. Die Lehre von Christi Person und Werk in populairen Vorlesungen vorgetragen von ERNST SARTORIUS, Doctor der Theologie. Fuenfte Auflage. Hamburg, 1845. 2. The Person and Work of Christ. By Ernest Sartorius, D. D., General Superintendent and Consistorial Director at Koenigsberg, Prussia. Translated by Rev. Oakman S. Stearns, A. M., Boston, 1848. THE second work here named offers itself to the world, as a translation of the first. If by a translation, however, we are to understand a true transfer of the sense and spirit of a book out of one language into another, it is wholly a misnomer to apply the term to this case. The original work of Sartorius is one. which comes up in full, both in sentiment and style, to the wide reputation, which has carried it in Germany through five editions, and made it a favorite with all who take an interest in practical piety under a manly and substantial form. No one can read it understandingly, without admiration and respect; and the heart must be dull indeed, that is not made to kindle, under its simple though profound devotional eloquence, into some corresponding • Writer of "The Apple as a Criterion of Taste," in No. I., the signature having been inadvertently omitted.-PUB. |