The time of stocking the pond is a consideration of no small importance.

'

In stocking ponds it must be strictly observed that the jack, carp, and tench be all of the same season or spring spawn; and the period for brooding the pond is towards the end of October, or if the season be open and mild, early in November, for the following reasons. Carp and tench being fish of the same habits, they slam or mud at the same period, lying torpid through the winter months, so that they keep secure from the attacks of the juvenile jack: the jack at that age finds sufficient food in worms, &c., to subsist upon: as the spring advances, when the carp and tench leave their winter lairs, the jack then in turn become sickly as their spawning season approaches, and consequently do not annoy the carp, much less the tench: this brings them through April, when the jack spawn, and they remain quiet from that time until the wet season of July.'—p. 9.

We quite agree with our author that eels, those merciless destroyers of the spawn and fry of other fish, should be strenuously kept out of the ponds; but it is very difficult to exclude them entirely, for they have a strong propensity to travel, and, not unfrequently, take evening or nocturnal rambles through the thick dewy grass in search of frogs, or to change their lodgings.

Supposing all to go well, let us now look to the harvest time.

'Returning to the subject of the succession ponds being fished every three years, it is to be borne in mind that the store at that age is fit for market, and the calculation for three years out of three acres would give on an average as follows:

.

:

Supposing the fish to be worth 1s. per lb., the value would be 1277. 10s. for three years, or 421. 10s. per annum; but were only half the price obtained, then as the first expense is the only one, it must be termed a profitable rental, especially as under the old system many gentlemen have large pieces of water which produce nothing.'—pp. 10, 11.

Our author has a friend in Saxony who rejoices in a domain comprising nearly eight thousand acres, of which nearly one-half is forest. On that estate are twenty-two ponds, the largest being about twentyseven acres in extent; and the stock above recommended was calculated by this comfortable Saxon, after forty years' experience of practical results. Out of this large pond, Gottlieb-we can fancy how he devoured them with his eyes-saw, in 1822, the two largest breeding-carp placed in the scale, and their united weight amounted to nearly 100 lbs., the male drawing 43 lbs., and the

R 2

female

female 48 lbs., Saxon: noble fish, even taken at our own rate of weights-but Saxon weight is above 7 per cent. heavier than English. In 1833 this goodly pair had increased, the male to 52 lbs., Saxon, and the female to 55 lbs. ! In the same year he was present at the draught of his friend's second-largest pond, covering seventeen acres. The produce exceeded 4000 lbs. weight of carp, besides tench and jack. In this pond the proprietor had left several carp for breeding, five of which weighed 103 lbs., Saxon; the largest of the five, a Spiegel carp, aged sixteen years, drew in the scale 31 lbs., English. The age of the two taken from the largest pond could not be correctly stated, as they were on the estate when he purchased it, some fifty years ago. This venerable couple, it seems, continue to fulfil the divine command, nothing loth. These fish,' says our author, they treat as prize fish, and consider them infinitely better for spawn than younger ones' (p. 12). The largest English carp known to us shrink before these dimensions. The brace presented by Mr. Ladbroke, from his park at Gatton, to the late Lord Egremont, weighed 35 lbs.; nor can we find a record of a single fish heavier than 19 lbs. Probably we do not give them time in this country; for the carp lives to a great age :—

'At Charlottenburg, the summer palace of the King of Prussia, in the ornamental waters of the domain, are a large number of carp, which are so extremely tame that they come to the surface to be fed at the sound of a bell. The keeper has his favourites; and it is said that there are some among them more than a century old. Where carp are well fed they may be seen basking in the sun on the surface of the water during the hot months of August and September, and sometimes rolling about like so many porpoise. They will scarcely retreat at the approach of any one; and become so extremely fat in stews, that a 10-lb. fish will frequently have fat an eighth of an inch thick on his sides, especially those of the Spiegel carp breed.'—p. 14.

We have here seen what may be done in rural economy with fish-ponds; and we earnestly call the attention of land-owners to the subject:

'The fish salesmen of the London markets all agree that, if a regular supply of live fresh-water fish were kept up, good prices and a large consumption would be the result: as it is, what little is introduced to the markets is readily purchased by the Jews, and during the season of Lent by the Roman Catholics. At any rate, the whole system of stocked fish-ponds, arranged as I have described in this pamphlet, must be productive of profit, tending also to increase the quantity of sustenance or food at a cheap rate for our fellow-creatures; moreover, producing a gain from that which now constitutes a waste.'-p. 17.

'I do not doubt,' says he, that were the system which it is the object of this little treatise to describe generally adopted, a very great demand

for

for fresh-water fish would ensue; for it is a business-like adage, that if you provide for a market by a regular supply, a market is created, and increased demand follows.'-p. 1.

As a gentle stimulus, Gottlieb Boccius administers, in his Appendix, twenty-three German recipes for cooking fresh-water fish; and, if any one should find his appetite flag, we beg to prescribe the perusal of this supplement about half an hour before dinner. We must not, however, be lured further by the captivating simplicity of tench fried with caper-sauce, or the more elaborate gastronomy manifested in carp poulpeton, or carp with oyster force-meat; but earnestly advising our friends not to overlook the jack cotelettes, we for the present take leave with the leonine hexameter, which-Halfordian in sense though Palmerstonian in prosody-concludes the vellum MS. of 1381

"Explicit de coquina quæ est optima medicina.'

ART. VIII.Letters of John Adams, addressed to his Wife. Edited by his Grandson, Charles Francis Adams. 2 vols. Boston. 1841.

IF

F we had been aware that the Letters of Mr. Adams would have so soon followed to the press those of his wife, one article might have sufficed for both; and if we shared the opinion which the Editor seems to have, that this batch of his family papers is less attractive than the former' (Preface, p. xiii.), we should certainly have thought that our readers had had quite enough of them. But though these letters fall short of what we might expect from Mr. Adams, they are in our judgment much superior -even in the lighter merits of epistolary writing-to those of his lady; and are not without a certain, though not very considerable, degree of historical and political interest. They, perhaps, on the whole, lower the opinion we had formed of the scale of Mr. Adams's intellect; but they confirm our opinion that he was-bating some weaknesses from which the best and the ablest are not exempt-a good man, and an honest man; and that his talents and character, though of no striking brilliancy, were respectable in themselves, and appropriate to the share which he was destined to take in the foundation of the American Republic.

It is remarkable that, though these volumes were printed before the Editor could have seen our observations on his former publication, his new Preface discusses at considerable length, and finally admits the justice of, the main objection we had made to

that

that work-namely, that, by selecting particular portions of a correspondence, and omitting, even in the selected portions, such parts as might not be satisfactory to his own feelings or palatable to the national taste, an editor diminishes-not to say destroysour confidence in the evidence and authority of the author. But having, most fairly, logically, and laboriously, arrived at our conclusion, it is comical to find that the very next thing the editor does is to acknowledge-with more candour than consistency--an essential departure from it.

6

For he admits that, though he has made no addition, he has used his discretion in making such omissions as he himself thought necessary,' and of selecting, not simply'-(which implies that the selection is made partly)—from personal considerations; and of furnishing, not the whole evidence, but as much' as, in his opinion, 'the public is desirous to see.' This discretion, it is obvious, differs little from that dictatorial power of selection and alteration against which he had in the half-dozen preceding pages so successfully argued; and the result is that we find ourselves condemned to read the letters of Mr. Adams with something of the same kind of distrust that we did those of his wife. The editor gives us to understand that he has exercised this power very sparingly, and rather fears that he may not have sufficiently lopped' indiscreet passages (vol. i. p. xi); but these apprehensions seem to us to be superfluous. It is true that Mr. Adams is often coarse in his expression of a political difference; and his construction of other men's motives and actions is apt to be habitually uncharitable: but there is little or nothing which at this day can give pain to anybody, unless, indeed, Mr. Adams's own friends; and it seems to us that he was, or at least is presented to us in these volumes as, one of the most cautious, not to say jejune, correspondents that we have ever met with. Indeed, the letters themselves are in nothing more abundant than in confessing their want of interest, and in making excuses for telling nothing when a great deal might have been told:

8th September, 1774. 'It would fill volumes to give you an idea of the scenes I behold, and the characters I converse with. We have so much business, so much ceremony, so much company, so many visits to receive and return, that I have not time to write. And the times are such as to make it imprudent to write freely.'-vol. i. p. 20.

'18th September, 1774.

'There is so much rascality in the management of letters now come in fashion, that I am determined to wrile nothing of consequence, not even to the friend of my bosom, but by conveyances which I can be sure of.'-vol. i. p. 25.

· 10th

'10th October, 1775.

I must be excused from writing a syllable of anything of any moment. My letters have been and will be nothing but trifles.'-vol. i. p. 63. • 28th April, 1776.

There is such a mixture of folly, littleness, and knavery in this world that I am weary of it; and although I behold it with unutterable contempt and indignation, yet the public good requires that I should take no notice of it by word or by letter.'-vol. i. p. 104.

' 31st March, 1777.

I believe you will think my letters very trifling-indeed they are. I write in trammels. Accidents have thrown so many letters into the hands of the enemy, and they take such a malicious pleasure in exposing them, that I choose they should have nothing but trifles from me to expose. For this reason I never write anything of consequence from Europe, from Philadelphia, from camp, or anywhere else.'-vol. i. p. 199. 21st February, 1779.

'I write you as often and as much as I ought. Let me entreat you to consider if some of your letters had by any accident been taken, what a figure would they have made in a newspaper, to be read by the whole world? Some of them, it is true, would have done honour to the most virtuous and most accomplished Roman matron; but others of them would have made you and me very ridiculous.'-vol. ii. p. 50.

'19th December, 1793. 'The common movements of ambition every day disclose to me views and hopes and designs that are very diverting, but these I will not commit to paper. They make sometimes a very pretty farce for amusement after the great tragedy or comedy is over. What I write to you must be in sacred confidence and strict discretion.'-vol. ii.

6

p. 134.

This last solemn recommendation of sacred confidence and strict discretion,' as to the very diverting' stories he will not tell her, has at least the merit of reminding us of Hotspur's pleasantry :

'Constant you are,

But yet a woman; and for secresy
No lady closer; for I well believe

Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know.'

But after all, we are surprised that these reiterated apologies for silence on the most interesting subjects and during the most important periods of his life-(there are but two short letters from 1788 to 1793, during the first vice-presidency)—did not awaken some misgiving in the editor's mind that letters so cautiously written were not likely to fulfil the noble historical objects' for which he professes to publish them.

We cannot, however, but suspect that the more immediate motive for printing these and the former volumes was, that the publication of the lives and correspondence of Washington, Jefferson,

Jay,