INTRODUCTION. 3 



men's awakened fears, or the misdirection of their best 

 affections, the solid enjoyments of a fleeting scene which 

 they affect to despise, whose harmless pleasures arouse 

 their holy indignation and kindle up their religious zeal. 

 Mankind, in fact, are angling in one direction or another 

 through all the various walks in life ; and it is perhaps 

 beyond a question, that the veritable angler the enthu- 

 siast of "the gentle craft," who treads the margin of 

 the mountain-stream, or paces the placid meadows, or 

 muses by the babbling waterfall, and seems to steep his 

 spirit in the vast ocean of heavenly blue which gushes 

 out from the deep fountains of the sky, is more harmlessly, 

 and intellectually, and therefore more rationally, em- 

 ployed, than all the others put together. His innocent 

 pleasures are founded on no man's wrongs; his enjoy- 

 ments cost no bitter and unavailing tears; his luxuries 

 are purchased at no fearful price of human sweat and 

 blood ; his wealth is not wrenched from the stores of the 

 feeble, nor wrung from the pittances of the wretched; 

 nature pours out for him with lavish hand the secret 

 abundance of her inexhaustible treasury ; and rich, in her 

 pure and sinless gifts, his soul swells with the sublimest 

 gratitude, and holds dread converse in its trembling joy 

 with the Infinite and Eternal. 



Old Izaak Walton has a budget of odd, quaint fancies, 

 about the origin and antiquity of fishing. Following, it 

 may be presumed, some antiquated fabulist, he imagines 

 that Seth was the first who devoted himself to the gentle 

 art ; that he taught it to his children, and bequeathed it 

 to mankind at large, by engraving the method, in com- 

 mon with music and other arts, on the large pillars which 

 he is supposed to have erected, and which, surviving the 



