io COUNTRY LIFE 



of authors of what may be termed the rural school. 

 But we may be satisfied with passing allusion to a few 

 that ought to be familiar to everybody. There is old 

 Izaak Walton, whose name, so long as our world exists, 

 seems likely to pass current as a household word among 

 generations of anglers who have never read a word of 

 him. Old Izaak was a Cockney himself, so far as living 

 in a city can make a Cockney. But in Izaak's days 

 even London had its limits : we fancy there was really 

 a green at Clerkenwell and a bubbling fountain ; and 

 a brisk morning walk from the bustle of Cheapside 

 brought you out among trees and brooks and meadows. 

 What can be more exhilarating than your sympathetic 

 sense of the sharpness of the change from the smoke 

 and noise of the streets he has left behind, to the 

 freshness and silence of the fields towards Hoddesdon ? 

 The pictures of rustic felicity are the more perfect that 

 the smoke of the capital is hanging on the horizon, and 

 that a faint hum of traffic is borne to their ears from 

 the neighbouring high road, as the anglers listen to the 

 carolling of the milkmaids, while casting their lines in 

 the slow-flowing stream, or sitting in the sanded 

 parlour of the little hostelry discussing their fish and 

 the details of catching and cooking them. We find 

 the fresh and quaint simplicity that is the charm of 

 Walton's style reproduced in the " Natural History 

 of Selborne," if we make due allowance for the lapse 

 of time and advances in the literary art and general 

 enlightenment. Devoted as we are to Gilbert White, 

 the extraordinary attraction he has for his readers must 



