Ill 



Away then, away, 



We lose sport by delay, 

 But first leave all our sorrow's behind us; 



If Miss Fortune should come, 



We are all gone from home, 

 And a fishing she never can find us." 



It is surely laudable to use, and confessedly sinful to 

 abuse the high privileges and prerogatives of our nature, 

 so it is evidently censorious and highly illiberal to anath- 

 metize the practice of appropriating to our use, individu- 

 ally or collectively in a temperate and well regulated in- 

 stitution, the bounteous gifts of a wise and benificent 

 Creator, who hath said, that his creature man " should 

 have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 

 of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon 

 the earth.''^ 



Charles Cotton, Esq. the worthy contemporary and 

 friend of good old Isaac Walton, and like him filled with 

 the amor piscator, in the stanza of a poem addressed to 

 him in 1676 inviting him to visit him at his retreat, one 

 hundred miles distant and renew their sport, when Isaac 

 was in his eighty-third year, happily describes the best 

 time to enjoy it, 



" A day, with not too bright a beam, 

 A warm but not a scorching sun, 

 A southern gale to curl the stream, 

 And, master, half our work is done. " 



