Charles St. John. 67 



might well be written, and I am not aware that it has 

 yet been exhaustively written, though Izaak Walton 

 and many of his disciples have glanced at it, on angling 

 as an aid to the study of nature and natural history in 

 certain of their aspects. It ensures that you shall not 

 defeat your own object, even by too actively and hotly 

 pursuing it, as too often happens, at all events to the 

 tyro or amateur. Nothing, indeed, is more difficult to 

 acquire than that patience and willingness to reserve 

 action for the sake of observing new traits of character 

 and unexpected actions. This is the test of real cul- 

 ture in the sportsman, this capability to forego sport, 

 when any exceptional trait will reward observation ; 

 and nothing in the Badminton book on "shooting," 

 has so much delighted me as the many evidences of 

 this quality, which has made the work a happy treasury 

 of natural history, and wise incitement to scientific 

 observation, as well as a most excellent and practical 

 guide to sportsmen, and especially young sportsmen. 

 This it was which gave colour and character to all the 

 writings of the late Mr. Charles St. John. Without 

 this, indeed, they would have had but half their value. 

 Charles Waterton's instinct in this regard rose to 

 genius. This, too, it is which gives charm to Charles 

 Kingsley's open air chapters, his "chalk-stream studies," 

 and so on, and often communicates a delicate fresh- 

 ness and gracious felicity to the pages of the Rev. G. M. 

 Watkins. Without its presence, indeed, to a greater 

 or lesser degree, all writings on sport are simply so 

 many incitements to cold-blooded butchery, in which 

 jealousy, vanity, and greed of personal success and 

 superiority are the chief constituents. 



Sir Edward Hamley, in his little essay on " Our 

 Poor Relations," notes this quaintly, and with sly 



