INTRODUCTORY. 5 



towards their centre, the tempestuous sea, yet sometimes opposed by 

 rugged rocks and pebble stones which broke their waves and turned 

 them into foam. And sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the 

 harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the green shade, whilst others 

 sported themselves in the cheerful sun. ... As I sat thus these and 

 other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content that I thought, 

 as the poet had happily expressed it : 



I was for that time lifted above earth, 

 And possessed joys not promised in my birth." 



Was ever such a charming scene presented by poet or painter before or 

 since? and to the sympathetic reader this quotation, of many others, 

 unfolds the secret of the formation of the pleasant thraldom with which 

 angling not "pot hunting " environs its disciples. 



For, indeed, what can be more soothing to man's nature than the 

 soft murmur of the breeze as it caresses the slender reeds or soughs 

 gently through the rushes, kissing the slowly flowing stream and raising 

 a smiling dimple of pleasure in the otherwise inanimate water ? The 

 artisan from the mill, though his hands be hard and horny, has a man's 

 love of Nature ; the tired business man, with his head hitherto full of 

 shares, bonds, coupons, debentures, and what not; even the states- 

 man, like Lucretius, " his mind half buried neath some weightier 

 argument" all are subdued by the tender force of unsophisticated 

 Nature. But they must have had the angler's training to enjoy it. 

 Who but an angler, having learned patience and accepted the gifts 

 of contemplation it is "the contemplative man's pastime" could 

 have written this passage anent the nightingale: "He that at 

 midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I 

 have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descents, the natural rising 

 and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted 

 above earth and say, ' Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the 

 souls in Heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth ? ' ' 

 Magnificent as is that ode on this bird of one ' ' whose name is writ 

 in water," John Keats no passage in it can compare to this simple piece 

 of heart poesy. The charm of angling is not broken since this was 

 written. 



Now, it may be asked, what special qualifications ought a would-be 

 angler to possess in order to enjoy the pleasures so enthusiastically 

 enumerated ? I answer that, inasmuch as that all men cannot be 

 appreciative of Nature and her works, in the same way that all men 

 cannot be poets, painters, or writers, so is it that all men who handle 

 a rod cannot be recipients of the superlative pleasures derivable from 



