CHAPTER V 



IZAAK WALTON 



IND now we are moved to turn aside from the 

 wild-eyed seers of sea serpents to a story of a 

 very different sort. 



Once there was a man, who turned from the 

 rattle and the clatter and the quagmires of London town, 

 not because he was sick of noise, or aweary of existence, 

 but because he knew of something better. There was great 

 strife in the little dingy old London of his day over politics 

 and religion, and the Spanish alliance and proceedings at 

 court, and a multitude of other things not refreshing to the 

 soul. So he turned to the green lanes of Staffordshire, to 

 the brooks that follow the winding lead of the Trent, as it 

 drops down through the forests of Nottingham on its way 

 to the North Sea. On the banks of its " silent silver 

 streams," he could gather the richest of harvests, the " har- 

 vest of the quiet eye," as one of his disciples said in another 

 green forest two centuries later. 



There were no great rivers where Izaak Walton walked, 

 and talked, and fished. The Dove is not so large as the Au 

 Sable, not so clear, so swift, nor half so rich in fish. Nor 

 can we compare the Dove with the Nepigon, Swaynham with 

 the Gallatin, the Stour with the Stanislaus, nor the Trent 

 to the Rangeley Lakes and the Saguenay. It is a quiet coun- 

 try, calm and green, that makes up Staffordshire. It stretches 

 from Axe-edge to Weekin Hill, and back to Weaver 

 Hill again, all forests and farms, with gentle springs under 

 green trees, and scarce a mile over which the busiest brook 

 would have to hurry. It is not the biggest river that gives 



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