honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition, in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect: Well, then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c. And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophecy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it: Thou neither great at court nor in the war, However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it a corpus perditum, without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at man, who says to his soul, Take thy ease:' I met presently not only with many little incumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness-a new misfortune to me as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine. Yet I do neither repent nor alter my course; Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum [I have not falsely sworn]. Nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her. Nec vos, dulcissima mundi Nor by me e'er shall you, You of all names the sweetest and the best, The Spring-tides of Public Affairs. I have often observed, with all submission and resignation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence, that when the fulness and maturity of time is come that produces the great confusions and changes in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human force or policy, but of the divine justice and predestination; and, though we see a man, like that which we call Jack of the Clock-house, striking as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be convinced that his hand is moved by some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so violent, that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak but they may sail down with it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs, which we see often happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes. And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this-though he may be as guilty as if he really were, by intending and imagining to be so-but it is God that breaks up the flood gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then, and industry of mankind, is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. The Antiquity of Agriculture. The three first men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman, and a grazier; and if any man object that the second of these was a murtherer, I desire he would consider that, as soon as he was so, he quitted our profession and turned builder. It is for this reason, I suppose, that Ecclesiasticus forbids us to hate husbandry; because,' says he, 'the Most High has created it.' We were all born to this art, and taught by Nature to nourish our bodies by the same earth out of which they were made, and to which they must return, and pay at last for their sustenance. Behold the original and primitive nobility of all these great persons, who are too proud; now, not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon it! We may talk what we please of lilies and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or d'argent; but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms. Of Obscurity. tentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving What a brave privilege is it to be free from all conand from paying all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage. Venus herself A veil of thickened air around them cast, That none might know, or see them, as they passed. VIRG. I E. The common story of Demosthenes's confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say, as he passed: 'This is that Demosthenes,' is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity, if it were any; but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Democritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot compre hend the honour that lies in that; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief-justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be anyways extraordinary. It was as often said: This is that Bucephalus,' or, This is that Incitatus,' when they were led prancing through the streets, as, 'This is that Alexander,' or, This is that Domitian;' and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire. I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by any body; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in-for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit: this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part than the greatest | actors that fill the stage with show and noise; nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well. The Danger of Procrastination. I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune, like a step-mother, has so long detained me. But, nevertheless, you say (which but is arugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon)-but you say you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me—according to the saying of that person, whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man-cum dignitate otium. This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there's no fooling with life, when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game; 'tis a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus-who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, a bountiful person to recommend to him, who had made so many rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too; 'but I entreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving persons; but in the most gentlemanly manner of obliging him, which is, not to add anything to his estate, but to take something from his desires.' The sum of this is, that for the certain hopes of some conveniences, we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary; especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered; nay, farther yet, though we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, the play is not worth the expense of the candle; after having been long tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and topgallants. A gentleman, in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner, and lost his life afterwards only by staying to put on a band and adjust his periwig: he would escape like a person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. Vision of Oliver Cromwell. I was interrupted by a strange and terrible apparition; for there appeared to me-arising out of the earth as I conceived-the figure of a man, taller than a giant, or indeed than the shadow of any giant in the evening. His body was naked, but that nakedness adorned, or rather deformed, all over with several figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons, painted upon it; and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and, if I be not much mistaken, it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass; and there were three crowns of the same metal, as I guessed, and that looked as red-hot, too, upon his head. He held in his right hand a sword that was yet bloody, and nevertheless, the motto of it was Pax quæritur bello ['We war for peace']; and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written, in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remonstrances, &c. Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so it pleased God-for there is nothing bolder than a man in a vision-that I was not at all daunted, but asked him resolutely and briefly: 'What art thou?' And he said: 'I am called the North-west Principality, his highness the Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging thereunto; for I am that Angel to whom the Almighty has committed the government of those three kingdoms, which thou seest from this place.' And I answered and said: 'If it be so, sir, it seems to me that for almost these twenty years past your highness has been absent from your charge; for not only if any angel, but if any wise and honest man had since that time been our governor, we should not have wandered thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths of confusion; but either not have entered at all into them, or at least have returned back ere we had absolutely lost our way; but, instead of your highness, we have had since such a protector as was his predecessor Richard III. to the king, his nephew; for he presently slew the Commonwealth, which he pretended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: a little less guilty, indeed, in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer. Such a protector we have had as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk than this every month's apostate; such a protector as man is to his flocks which he shears, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more? Such a protector'- And, as I was proceeding, methought his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him; for I did not believe that Cromwell, among all his foreign correspondences, had ever held any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then; and therefore-as if I had spoken to the Protector himself in Whitehall-I desired him that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken anything to the disparagement of a person whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know.' At which he told me, 'that he had no other concernment for his late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not,' said he, of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, a naturalised English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country.-And pray, countryman,' said he, very kindly and very flatteringly, 'for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue; what can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned, that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three king doms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and, lastly-for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory-to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been, too, for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs.' IZAAK WALTON. One of the most interesting and popular of our early writers was IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683), an English worthy of the simple antique cast, who retained in the heart of London, and in the midst of close and successful application to business, an unworldly simplicity of character, and an inextinguishable fondness for country scenes, pastimes, and recreations. He had also a power of natural description and lively dialogue that has rarely been surpassed. His Complete Angler is a rich storehouse of rural pictures and pastoral poetry, of quaint but wise thoughts, of agreeable and humorous fancies, and of truly apostolic purity and benevolence. The slight tincture of superstitious credulity and innocent eccentricity which pervades his works, gives them a finer zest, and original flavour, without detracting from their higher power to soothe, instruct, and delight. Walton was born in the town of Stafford. Of his education or his early years nothing is related; but according to Anthony à Wood, he acquired a moderate competency, by following in London the occupation of a sempster or linendraper. He had a shop in the Royal Burse in Cornhill, which was seven feet and a half long, and five wide. Lord Bacon has a punning remark, that a small room helps a studious man to condense his thoughts, and certainly Izaak Walton was not destitute of this intellectual succedaneum. He had a more pleasant and spacious study, however, in the fields and rivers in the neighbourhood of London, in such days and times as he laid aside business, and went a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe. From the Royal Burse, Izaak-for so he always wrote his name-removed to Fleet Street, where he had one half of a shop, the other half being occupied by a hosier. About the year 1632, he was married to Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inn, and sister of Dr Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells. This respectable connection probably introduced Walton to the acquaintance of the eminent men and dignitaries of the church, at whose houses he spent much of his time in his latter years, especially after the death of his wife, a woman of remarkable prudence, and of the primitive piety.' Walton retired from business in 1643, and lived forty years afterwards in uninterrupted leisure. His first work was a Life of Dr Donne prefixed to a collection of the doctor's sermons, published in 1640. Sir Henry Wotton was to have written Donne's life, Walton merely collecting the materials; but Sir Henry dying before he had begun to execute the task, Izaak 'reviewed his forsaken collections, and resolved that the world should see the best plain picture of the author's life that his artless pencil, guided by the hand of truth, could present.' The memoir is circumstantial and deeply interesting. He next wrote a Life of Sir Henry Wotton (1651), and edited his literary remains. In 1652 he published a small work, a translation by Sir John Skeffington, from the Spanish, The Heroe of Lorenzo, to which he prefixed a short affectionate notice of his deceased friend, the translator, who had died the previous year. His principal production, The Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation, appeared in 1653; and four other editions of it were called for during his life-namely, in 1655, 1664, 1668, and 1676. Walton also wrote a Life of Richard Hooker (1662), a Life of George Herbert (1670), and a Life of Bishop Sanderson (1678). They are all exquisitely simple, touching, and impressive. Though no man seems to have possessed his soul more patiently during the troublous times in which he lived, the venerable Izaak was tempted, in 1680, to write and publish anonymously two letters on the Distempers of the Times, 'written from a quiet and conformable citizen of London to two busie and factious shopkeepers in Coventry.' In 1683, when in his ninetieth year, he published the Thealma and Clearchus of Chalkhill, which we have previously_noticed; and he died at Winchester on the 15th December of the same year, while residing with his son-inlaw, Dr Hawkins, prebendary of Winchester Cathedral. The Complete Angler of Walton is a production unique in our literature. In writing it, he says he made a recreation of a recreation,' and, by mingling innocent mirth and pleasant scenes with the graver parts of his discourse, he designed it as a picture of his own disposition. The work is, indeed, essentially autobiographical in spirit and execution. A hunter and falconer are introduced as parties in the dialogues, but they serve only as foils to the venerable and complacent Piscator, in whom the interest of the piece wholly centres. The opening scene lets us at once into the genial character of the work and its hero. The three interlocutors meet accidentally on Tottenham Hill, near London, on a 'fine fresh May morning.' They are open and cheerful as the day. Piscator is going towards Ware, Venator to meet a pack of other dogs upon Amwell Hill, and Auceps to Theobald's, to see a hawk that a friend there mews or moults for him. Piscator willingly joins with the lover of hounds in helping to destroy otters, for he hates them perfectly, because they love fish so well, and destroy so much.' The sportsmen proceed onwards together, and they agree each to 'commend his recreation' or favourite pursuit. Piscator alludes to the virtue and contentedness of anglers, but gives the precedence to his companions in discoursing on their different crafts. The lover of hawking is eloquent on the virtues of air, the element that he trades in, and on its various winged inhabitants. He describes the falcon ‘making her highway over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and, in her glorious career, looking with contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces which we adore and wonder at.' The singing birds, 'those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art,' are descanted upon with pure poetical feeling and expression. The Singing Birds. At first the lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer herself and those that hear her, she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air; and having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad, to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity. How do the blackbird and throssel (song-thrush), with their melodious voices, bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed mouths warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to! Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, as, namely, the laverock (skylark), the titlark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead. But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instru mental throat that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say: 'Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!' The lover of hunting next takes his turn, and comments, though with less force-for here Walton himself must have been at fault-on the perfection of smell possessed by the hound, and the joyous music made by a pack of dogs in full chase. Piscator then unfolds his long-treasured and highly prized lore on the virtues of water-sea, river, and brook; and on the antiquity and excellence of fishing and angling. The latter, he says, is 'somewhat like poetry: men must be born so. He quotes Scripture, and numbers the prophets who allude to fishing. He also remembers with pride that four of the twelve apostles were fishermen, and that our Saviour never reproved them for their employment or calling, as he did the Scribes and money-changers; for 'He found that the hearts of such men, by nature, were fitted for contemplation and quietness; men of mild, and sweet, and peaceable spirits, as, indeed, most anglers are. The idea of angling seems to have unconsciously mixed itself with all Izaak Walton's speculations on goodness, loyalty, and veneration. Even worldly enjoyment he appears to have grudged to any less gifted mortals. A finely dressed dish of fish, or a rich drink, he pronounces too good for any but anglers or very honest men; and his parting benediction is upon 'all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in Providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling.' The last condition would, in his ordinary mood, when not peculiarly solemn or earnest, be quite equivalent to any of the others. The rhetoric and knowledge of Piscator at length fairly overcome Venator, and make him a convert to the superiority of angling, as compared with his more savage pursuit of hunting. He agrees to accompany Piscator in his sport, adopts him as his master and guide, and in time becomes initiated into the practice and mysteries of the gentle craft. The angling excursions of the pair give occasion to the practical lessons and descriptions in the book, and elicit what is its greatest charm, the minute and vivid painting of rural objects, the display of character, both in action and conversation, the flow of generous sentiment and feeling, and the associated recollections of picturesque poetry, natural piety, and examples and precepts of morality. Add to this the easy elegance of Walton's style, sprinkled, but not obscured, by the antiquated idiom and expression of his times, and clear and sparkling as one of his own favourite summer streams. Not an hour of the fishing day is wasted or unimproved. The master and scholar rise with the early dawn, and after four hours' fishing, breakfast at nine under a sycamore that shades them from the sun's heat. Old Piscator reads his admiring scholar a lesson on fly-fishing, and they sit and discourse while a 'smoking shower' passes off, freshening all the meadow and the flowers. And now, scholar, I think it will be time to repair to our angle rods, which we left in the water to fish for themselves; and you shall choose which shall be yours; and it is an even lay, one of them catches. And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead rod, and laying night hooks, are like putting money to use; for they both work for their owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore, as Virgil's Tityrus and his Melibus did under their broad beech-tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr Boteler said of strawberries, Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;' and so if I might be judge, 'God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.' bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, that they were too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays.' As I then sat on this very grass, I turned my present thoughts into verse: 'twas a wish which I'll repeat to you : Or, with my Bryan1 and a book, And angle on; and beg to have A quiet passage to a welcome grave. The master and scholar, at another time, sit under a honeysuckle-hedge while a shower falls, and encounter a handsome milkmaid and her mother, who sing to them 'that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlow :' Come live with me, and be my love; and the answer to it, 'which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days' (see ante, p. 103). At night, when sport and instruction are over, they repair to the little alehouse, well known to Piscator, where they find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.' The hostess is cleanly, handsome, and civil, and knows how to dress the fish after Piscator's own fashion-he is learned in cookery-and having made a supper of their gallant trout, they drink their ale, tell tales, sing ballads, or join with a brother-angler who drops in, in a merry catch, till sleep overpowers them, and they retire to the hostess' two beds, 'the linen of which looks white and smells of lavender.' All this humble but happy painting is fresh as nature herself, and instinct with moral feeling and beauty. The only speck upon the brightness of old Piscator's benevolence is one arising from his entire devotion to his art. He will allow no creature to take fish but the angler, and concludes that any honest man may make a just quarrel with swan, geese, ducks, the sea-gull, heron, &c. His directions for making live-bait have subjected him to the charge of cruelty, and are certainly curious enough. Painted flies seem not to have occurred to him, and the use of snails, worms, &c. induced no compunctious visitings. For taking pike he recommends a perch, as the 1 Supposed to be the name of his dog. Don Juan, Canto xiii. longest lived fish on a hook, and the poor frog is treated with elaborate and extravagant inhumanity : : And thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from the middle of April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how. I say, put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth and out at his gills; and with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possible, that he may live the longer. Modern taste and feeling would recoil from such experiments as these, and we may oppose to the aberrations of the venerable Walton the philosophical maxim of Wordsworth: Never to blend our pleasure or our pride If this observation falls into the opposite extreme -seeing that it would, if rigidly interpreted, suppress field-sports and many of the luxuries and amusements of life-we must admit that it is an excess more amiable than that into which Piscator was led by his attachment to angling. Towards the conclusion of his work, Walton indulges in the following strain of moral reflection and admonition, and is as philosophically just and wise in his counsels, as his language and imagery are chaste, beautiful, and animated. Thankfulness for Worldly Blessings. Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle-hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for our happiness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to consider with me how many do, even at this and toothache; and this we are free from. And every very time, lie under the torment of the stone, the gout, misery that I miss is a new mercy; and therefore let us be thankful. There have been, since we met, others that have met disasters of broken limbs; some have been blasted, others thunder-strucken; and we have been freed from these and all those many other miseries that threaten human nature: let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Nay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the unsupportable burden of an accusing, tormenting conscience-a misery that none can bear; and say, Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. and therefore let us praise Him for his preventing grace, Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense of a little money, have eat, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again, which are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money. Let me tell you, scholar, I have a rich neighbour that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; the whole business of his life is to get money, and more money, that he may still get more and more money; he is still drudging on, and says that Solomon says, "The hand of the diligent maketh |