useless infancy, they never grow in fresh water,
and the river people have no right to catch them
when they seek their breeding-ground. The
truth is, that so long as they are simply allowed
to follow their natural instinct, they are by right
the property of anybody who can catch them.
It was so at one time; the right of fishing for
salmon was vested in the Crown; but the Crown
has thought proper to give away or sell its right
to individuals and corporations.

But when the river proprietors think proper
to cultivate their waters, the question assumes
a different aspect; for no man has a right to
appropriate to himself the labour of others. At
present they are not cultivated; a few men
are employed to prevent poachers from taking the
breeding-fish, but nothing further is attempted.
No man should be deprived of his present
rights; let, therefore, these stake-net
proprietors have their present right valued, pay
them, and abolish the nets. The sea is a
common, and everybody has an equal right
to everything running wild upon it; but the
general public can have no right to animals
reared at much cost at home, and merely turned
out, as it were, to graze. Unless something of
this sort be done, it is absurd to expect that any
improvement can take place in our salmon-fisheries.
There is another great objection to
these stake and bag nets in the sea; they destroy
and molest the fish on their feeding-ground, and
kill thousands of them before they are half grown.
It is a great mistake to suppose that fish taken
in the sea are better than those taken in the
river. Those entering the river are in the finest
possible condition, while those taken in the sea
are smaller, especially the grilse, and—best
proof of all—do not bring so much in the market.

           MY HEART'S IN THE HIGHLANDS.

WHEN an English excursionist crosses the
border, and comes in sight of a heath-covered
mountain, he is apt to think that he is. in the
Highlands. But Scotland is not all highlands.
There is a large portion of it, which, though not
without mountains, is called the Lowlands. The
divisions are natural and well defined, though they
are not marked out with a stone or wall, like the
boundaries of a parish. The Highlands
comprehend the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland
Islands, the counties of Argyle, Inverness,
Nairn, Ross, Cromarty, Sutherland, and Caithness,
with parts of Dumbarton, Stirling, Perth,
Forfar, Kincardine, Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray.
The Lowlands comprise those portions of the
country which lie on the east coast close to the
sea. By the eastern route you may travel from
Edinburgh to Aberdeen without setting foot in
the Highlands; by the western route you may
reach the granite city without setting foot in the
Lowlands—or nearly so. In mentioning this
geographical fact I shall not be teaching even my
Scotch grandmother; for it is not every Caledonian
who can say for certain when he is in the Highlands,
and when he is in the Lowlands. Chasing
the wild deer and following the roe, your heart
may figuratively be in the Highlands wherever
you go, but not actually. I have been a fortnight
in Scotland, I have travelled hundreds of miles, I
have climbed mountains, I have viewed cataracts,
I have seen John o'Groat's House, and yet I
have not once touched Highland ground.

But I "take" the Highlands on my way
home. Yes; though I am greeting sair (as
I knew I should) at parting from, bonny Banff,
I still can speak of London as " home." It
is the home of the world—a dear old smoky
wilderness with a thousand bright oases, where
all the nationalities of the earth are free to
make themselves as happy and comfortable as
circumstances will permit. And, circumstances
permitting, how comfortable one can be in
London! Elsewhere in the world you feel that
you are a stranger, even after many years; but
in London you are at home the moment you
have mastered the topography of its streets. In
this London street where I make my home,
there reside with me, on terms of neighbourly
intimacy, an Irishman, a Frenchman, an American,
and a Parsee (whom I have never yet caught
with his calico hat off); and I find that, though
born in different quarters of the globe, professing
different religions, and having, in other
respects, different tastes, we are all of one mind
in regarding London as a familiar, congenial
dwelling-place, in which we are snug, safe, and
secure. The unanimity of our love for certain
places has often struck me as being very
remarkable. There is no sight on the face of the
earth that awakens more pleasurable feelings
in my breast than a glimpse of Highgate through
the trees on a summer's day. My Irish neighbour
has told me many a time that he loves
Highgate as dearly as Limerick, his native city;
and the Parsee gentleman says that he feels as
if he had been born and spent his youth at
Highgate, and that he would like to be buried
there. We have the same sort of love and, as
it were, native attachment for Hampstead,
Richmond, Kew, and other sweet places, which are
not for a country, but for all the world. I
sometimes think that I knew and loved these
places in a former state of existence. I seem to
have known them before I knew the spots where
I spent the young days of my present life. I am
not ashamed, then, to say that, in quitting the
lovely Scotch valley where I was born, and
turning my face towards London, I am going
"home." The wicked city, some call it. I call
it the city of the good. Reckon with me, and
I will find you, not ten, but ten thousand righteous.
Don't talk to me of the virtuous peasant
living a life of simplicity in secluded dales,
far from the corrupting influence of towns.
Give him his best Sunday-going waistcoat,
embroidered with all the most innocent flowers of
the valley, and I will find you a more virtuous
man any day in Fleet-street—one with as true
and pure a heart as ever beat, though he does
live in the wicked city, and never hears the birds
sing except at the Pantheon in Oxford-street,
nor smells the perfume of flowers except in