THE TALE OF THE FISHES 



honeysuckles in orient pearl breathing their odors 

 through the June days, and the blackberry blossoms 

 that Walt Whitman said would adorn the parlors of 

 Heaven. But "born to joy and pleasance," queen of 

 his heart among them all, 



"O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis. 

 Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free." 

 And lastly, as you have inferred, the true angler 

 is more or less of a poet. He is peculiarly susceptible 

 to the beautiful. By beauty I mean a true quality, 

 incapable of analysis but appreciable by a mode of per- 

 ception, and perfectly real to the perceiver. We can- 

 not define it, but we can realize that it means thought 

 or feeling uttered in some perfect form by the divine 

 reason or the imagination of man. It is the manifesta- 

 tion of an aesthetic idea. The principle that seems to 

 explain it, that lies at the basis of all beautiful impres- 

 sion, is the principle of harmony, which involves the 

 action of God's universal laws on substances and forces 

 of His creation, to realize in each case some specific 

 purpose of His own. In this consists design, the adapt- 

 ation of means to an end. In this is comprehended the 

 happy fulfillments of function in living things, whereby 



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