But these unceremonious duckings were amply compensated by the more abundant reward of such a "drag;" for, great was the excitement when, as the wings began to close, we saw the quick gleams, like those of sword blades, up the deep green water, of the long-bodied pike, which were becoming alarmed, and then, as we rushed the net on them, one would dart swiftly upwards, and flashing an instant in the air, pass clear over the floats, unless caught by the ready hand of a float tender.

Then such clamors of approval at the feat, from the shore, mingled with the cries of warning as another went shining after and over, followed by a desperate rush of the strong and headlong white trout, or rather, perch, some of them leaping a full yard straight up into the sunlight, and others lashing the water in furious struggles to burst their way through the meshes of the net.

What a pell-mell of rushing, spattering, snatching, screaming and laughing, that landing was! Many of the finest fish escaped in the flurry, as is always the case in this kind of sport-as it is impossible to prevent the bold leaps of the white trout and pike. The succors, too, make their escape frequently in this manner, and some of the more active varieties of the perch-of which the fish I have called the white trout is the most remarkable. We have, indeed, no true trout in our western rivers; but the habits of this magnificent fish are so closely allied to those of that noble family, that the name is generally yielded to it in deference. The other fish thus taken, are the blue-cat, the black and golden perch, along with the glistening silver-side, and many similar varieties. The soft-shell turtle is frequently captured and recognized as a dainty.

Thus we continued, with varying success, to drag all the holes of the river, until the immediate neighborhood of the spring had been reached. By this time we were tired enough and the thought of dinner was a very pleasant one. The baskets of fish had been regularly, after each successful drag,

forwarded to the spring to be cared for by the ladies; and now, as we crawled, weary and dripping, forth to dress ourselves, under the protecting bank, we blessed our stars that this "fun" was over, and that our expectant Houries had something more substantial on hand awaiting us than ambrosia.

Our hurried toilets made as best we might, we found our way to the scene of anticipated reward, guided thither by the smell of cooking fish, which "burdened all the air" with an aroma far more luscious to us now in our ravenous mood than that of all the flowers we had crushed in our morning ride.

Every one must remember, that long exposure to the effects of cold water is apt to provoke a most unpoetical appetite. Ah! how genial was the merry greeting we received -how romantic seemed the flushed cheeks of our cooking belles, and when fairly seated on the green sod for our table, how far more ethereal seemed their light forms than the Pagan Houries, as partly enwreathed in the smoke of Jim's great fire, they received from his lordly hand the steaming dishes, and bore them with divinest smiles, and fingers rosetipped, like those of so many auroras, by the heat, to place them before us! Ah! tell it not to heathens what a Paradise was thus made for us of that scene, or all Christendom will surely be in danger from overrunning hordes of Infidels seeking to realize this supremest mundane bliss-the Dinner at a Fish Fry!

We love our own face in a mirror, and, like a second Narcissus, we grow amorous over it, shadowed in the burnished lapsing of a fountain-we love the stars sleeping in deep waters, too, (happy association !) and the pageantry of cloud, and rock, and tree, reversed in a still, liquid sky-in a word, we love all similitudes!

Perhaps this is because they illustrate to us a power of reproduction external to ourselves, and this is such an approach to that creative faculty which belongs to the "big imagination" in us, that, having no jealousy in our temper, we are charmed to see, even in "dumb nature," something like a rivalry of this "bright particular"-gift-we own.

In truth, there is something worth following up in this idea. We should like to see the painter or the poet who could ever produce a landscape so cunningly, even to the last minute tracery of its lines and shades, as we have seen the unruffled surface of a lake do it some clear, calm morn

ing before sunrise. Not one twisted fibre of the grass, one knotted eccentric twig, one blue-eyed, dewy-lipped violet but hung there upside down, to be sure-but perfect as it came from God's hand.

"What is this? Does it not mock our pride of art, and shame its dedicated altars ?"

"It is God's handiwork through his natural laws !"

"Ah! But the picture is not always there. Does God (in reverence) with his own personal hand paint the landscape in the lake whenever it is seen? Is it a special act ?" 'No; it is consequential upon an arrangement of laws fixed since the birth of time."

"You are smiling! was that smile now upon your face pre-ordained since the same period?"

"So far as we know, it was, equally with the other, consequential."

"That smile was a physical expression of a mental condition or humor in yourself, was it not?"

"Ay."

"It might have been a frown, or varied by other external modification ?"

"Ay."

Might not the landscape in the lake have been a stormshaken blurr?"

"Granted."

"Is it not quite as 'consequential,' then, that earth has her physical expressions of certain conditions and humors of the vital force in her which are affected by external relations ?"

"What external relations can you mean?"

"First, those to her solar system; next, those to the other systems which make up the universe. These relations may determine in her all the action of elemental expression-variations of the seasons, &c., &c."

"Pshaw! fogmatic !"

Guilty; but still, we 'love similitudes.'"

It is an old fancy of that science of seeing deepest into the millstone, called Metaphysical Philosophy, that the earth is an animal-a living thing-of course insensate brute and huge, to our apprehension, but to the vision of Higher Intelligences an apparelled creature in its robes of cloud and light -swung on its orbed circuit, amid travelling peers: that to them its vast calm front must be forever pregnant with a meaning of its own; and they can, to "the dumbness of its very gesture," interpret; that it has articulations, "joints and motives" to its body, which must move, act and obey the impulse of the life within it. This active impulse-call it the galvanic fluid, or the principle of life-lives through and animates its own great bulk, as well as through every modification of its aggregate mass which we see as forms, and know as existences:

"One sun illumines heaven, one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new."

That this sphered creature must have been itself in chaos a thought projected out of the mind of God-the base and original of the being of which was a self-modifying vital principle.

This vital force was independent of, and prior to, all organization; yet the law of its energies was the creative or self-formative-so that, if it acted through itself at all, it must act creatively-plastically-expressing this action in forms, the combinations of its own constituents.

Mark you; the gift of this creative energy was from God, who gave it its laws, making it through them self-acting.

In a word, His higher energy produced here a remote modification of some one thought or phase of His own Eternal might; and this we call-and it is to us-creative.

The fact of its being an energy sustained from God, implies the necessity of action, and this action constitutes its development of itself-its entity.