158 THE WILD-FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 



It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and 

 simplicity of heart. There are many choice old 

 verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man's 

 temper at any time to read it ; it would Christianise 

 every discordant, angry passion ; pray make your- 

 self acquainted with it." And this quality of serenity 

 is the more remarkable when we remember the tur- 

 bulent age in which it appeared. The King and the 

 Archbishop had perished on the scaffold only a few 

 years before ; the Long Parliament had just been dis- 

 solved by Cromwell with the significant words, "The 

 Lord has done with you ; " many of the most devoted 

 of the clergy had recently been turned out of their 

 livings ; episcopacy was abolished ; and a Royalist, 

 such as Walton was, must have felt that his lot had 

 indeed fallen on evil days. And yet his writings 

 betray no resentment ; not a harsh word, not an un- 

 charitable judgment is met with ; only gladness and 

 purity and singleness of heart. It is to this aspect 

 of his work that Keble refers when, in a well-known 

 stanza of The Christian Year, he exclaims : 



" O who can tell how calm and sweet, 

 Meek Walton ! shews thy green retreat, 

 When, wearied with the tale thy times disclose, 

 The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose ? " 



The good man, as Wordsworth wrote of him upon a 

 blank leaf in The Compleat Angler, was " nobly versed 

 in simple discipline," and he could thank God for the 

 smell of lavender, and the songs of birds, and a 

 " good day's fishing " ; for " health and a competence 

 and a quiet conscience." " Every misery that I miss 

 is a new mercy," he says to his honest scholar, as they 

 walk towards Tottenham High Cross, " and therefore 



