158 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and 

 simplicity of heart. There are many choice old 

 verses interspersed in it ; it would sweeten a man's 

 temper at any time to read it ; it would Christianise 

 every discordant, angry passion ; pray make your- 

 self acquainted with it." And this quality of serenity 

 is the more remarkable when we remember the tur- 

 bulent age in which it appeared. The King and the 

 Archbishop had perished on the scaffold only a few 

 years before ; the Long Parliament had just been dis- 

 solved by Cromwell with the significant words, "The 

 Lord has done with you ; " many of the most devoted 

 of the clergy had recently been turned out of their 

 livings ; episcopacy was abolished ; and a Royalist, 

 such as Walton was, must have felt that his lot had 

 indeed fallen on evil days. And yet his writings 

 betray no resentment ; not a harsh word, not an un- 

 charitable judgment is met with ; only gladness and 

 purity and singleness of heart. It is to this aspect 

 of his work that Keble refers when, in a well-known 

 stanza of The Christian Year, he exclaims : 



" O who can tell how calm and sweet, 

 Meek Walton ! shews thy green retreat, 

 When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose, 

 The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose ?" 



The good man, as Wordsworth wrote of him upon a 

 blank leaf in The Compleat Angler, was " nobly versed 

 in simple discipline," and he could thank God for the 

 smell of lavender, and the songs of birds, and a 

 ** good day's fishing " ; for " health and a competence 

 and a quiet conscience." " Every misery that I miss 

 is a new mercy," he says to his honest scholar, as they 

 walk towards Tottenham High Cross, " and therefore 



