SUNDAY FISHING. 339 



and understanding of the uneducated, and ex- 

 cite a desire to know the poet and his writings. 



As I stood admiring the prospect, looking to- 

 wards Windermere and feeling the mild breeze 

 from the lake, so auspicious to angling, I was 

 not without a longing to be afloat on its surface, 

 or by the river side rod in hand. 



PISCATOR. I have often on a Sunday expe- 

 rienced the same temptation ; and when a 

 younger man and with somewhat more latitudi- 

 narianism, and amongst Eoman Catholics, I 

 have occasionally given way to it, where by so 

 doing no offence would be given, reconciling 

 myself to the yielding with the reflection that 

 such gentle exercise on solitary and secluded 

 waters was a better mode of spending time than 

 idling it in desultory talk or in thoughts as 

 desultory. And the old fisherman who was 

 usually my companion, himself a Eoman Catho- 

 lic, was even more strongly of my opinion, and 

 always concluded, when his opinion of Sunday 

 fishing was asked, with saying, " We might do 

 things very much worse." Let me add, that 

 when we did fish on a Sunday, it was only when 

 the weather was peculiarly tempting, and that 

 we engaged in it, as well as I remember more 



Z 2 



