" No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy, so pleasant, as the life of 

 a well-governed angler j for while the lawyer is swallowed up with busi- 

 ness, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, there we sit on 

 cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quiet- 

 ness, as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by us. 

 Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling, as Dr. Botelar said of 

 strawberries, * Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubt- 

 less God never did ; ' and so, if I might judge, God never did make a more 

 calm, quiet, innocent recreation, than angling." IZAAC WALTON. 



" I call a river enriched with inhabitants, where rocks are landlords, and 

 trouts tenants. For here 's not a stream but is furnished with trouts ; I 

 have angled them over from stem to stern ; and dragged them forth, brace 

 after brace, with nothing but a hackle, or an artificial fly adapted to the 

 season and proportioned to the life. Humour but the fish and you have 

 his life, and that's as much as you can promise yourself. Oh ! the diversion 

 I have had in these solitary streams ! believe me, Theophilus, it surpasseth 

 report. I remember on a time, when the clouds let fall some extravagant 

 drops, which in a manner discoloured the face of the water ; then it was 

 among these stony cisterns, a little above that trembling stream, I have 

 struck and killed many a brace of brave trouts j a reward beyond my 

 labour and expense ! " FRANCKS. A.D. 1656. 



LONDON : 



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