24 THE SALMON. 



angler are almost as much ways of mercy, as of peace 

 and pleasantness. 



Sufficient refutation, indeed, of the charge of cruelty 

 might have been found merely in an enumeration of the 

 peculiarly amiable as well as eminent men who have 

 both praised and practised the truly gentle art. Without 

 going the length of saying that all good men are anglers, 

 we may say that most anglers are good men, and that 

 angling has a tendency to make men good. It soothes 

 and elevates, and leads to meditation and self-scrutiny. 

 Many a man who, in the stir and pressure of active life, 

 becomes hardened to the gentler and more generous 

 emotions, obtains glimpses that make him less forlorn or 

 more divine, when wandering "the quiet waters by." 

 The true influence of the art is seen in its literature. A 

 gentle and a generous man was Izaak Walton, the father 

 of angling literature it had a mother long before iri 

 Dame Julyana Berners, the prioress of St. Albans. The 

 same may be said of almost every man who has contri- 

 buted to the subject, by no means excepting those of our 

 own day the Wilsons, Jesse, Scrope, Stoddart, Stephen 

 Oliver, and many more. But this is not the strongest 

 part of the case. While many good men have written 

 whole books in praise of the art, how few, either good, 

 bad, or indifferent, have dared to say a word in its dis- 

 praise ! Of course, there was Lord Byron, who calls our 

 old Izaak a "cruel coxcomb/' and actually prays a thing 

 which he was "baith dede sweert and wretched ill o'" 

 that strength might be granted to the "poor little trout" 

 to pull in the said Izaak and all others who might try to 

 pull it out. But the real truth is, that angling was far 



