He
would not complain, of course, were either of the views backed, like
those glorious ones of Turin or Venice, by the white saw-edge of the
distant Alps: but chiefly because the perpetual sight of that Alp-
wall would increase the sense of home, of guarded security, which not
the mountain, but the sea, or the very thought of the sea, gives to
all true Englishmen.
Let others therefore (to come back to angling) tell of moor and loch.
But let it be always remembered that the men who have told of them
best have not been mountaineers, but lowlanders who carried up to the
mountain the taste and knowledge which they had gained below. Let
them remember that the great Sutherlandshire sportsman and sporting
writer, the late Mr. St. John, was once a fine gentleman about town;
that Christopher North was an Edinburgh Professor, a man of city
learning and city cultivation; and, as one more plea for our cockney
chalk-streams of the south, that Mr. Scrope (who passed many pleasant
years respected and beloved by Kennet side, with Purdy at his heels)
enjoyed, they say, the killing of a Littlecote trout as heartily as
he did that of a Tweed salmon.
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