30 THE SALMON. 



names ? Almost every man knows among his own 

 acquaintances, and especially among the best of them, 

 of cases in which the love of angling has become, not 

 only the one recreation, but the absorbing passion of 

 life. A man is in our mind's eye who could see nothing 

 enticing in Milton's description of the celestial abodes, 

 except where it is said that 



" The river of bliss through midst of heaven 

 Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream." 



On the other hand, we have heard of a person who was 

 wont to derive consolation from the item of foreign in- 

 telligence given by Shakspeare, "Nero is an angler in 

 the lake of darkness," and who fondly imagined he had 

 got a " wrinkle" as to the best bait for the river Styx. 

 This gentleman, however, was afterwards brought to 

 better behaviour and more cheerful views. And indeed 

 the cases in which anglers are ever otherwise than good 

 and cheerful men must evidently be exceptional. To say 

 otherwise is not only to collide with facts, but to utter 

 profanity against Nature- to assume that love of her is 

 compatible and connected with love of cruelty and other 

 evil things that there is no virtue in "the impulse 

 from a vernal wood," no teaching of love or gentleness 

 in fragrant fields and cooling waters. 



