Vlil 



SKETCH OF WALTON S LIFE. 



him ; to be matched with a woman of an exalted understanding, and a 

 mild and humble temper, to have children of good inclinations and sweet 

 and amiable dispositions, and to see them well settled, is not the lot of 

 every man, who, preferring a social to a solitary life, chooses to become 

 the head of a family. 



But blessings like these are comparatively light, when weighed against 

 those of a mind stored like his with a great variety of useful knowledge, 

 and a temper that could harbour no malevolent thought or insidious de- 

 sign ; nor stoop to the arts of fraud or flattery, but disposed him to love 

 and virtuous friendship, to the enjoyment of innocent delights and recrea- 

 tions, to the contemplation of the works of nature, and the ways of Pro- 

 vidence, and to the still sublimer pleasures of rational piety. 



If, possessing all these benefits and advantages, external and internal, 

 together with a mental constitution, so happily attempered, as to have 

 been to him a perpetual fountain of cheerfulness, we can entertain a 

 doubt that Walton was one of the happiest of men, we estimate them at 

 a rate too low, and show ourselves ignorant of the nature of that felicity, 

 to which it is possible, even in this life, for virtuous and good men with 

 the blessing of Grod to arrive. 



The foregoing biographical sketch is condensed from the life of Walton 

 prefixed to an edition of his "Complete Angler" published in 1797 by 

 Sir J. Hawkins, who in a remote degree (Anne Walton's only daughter 

 married a Hawkins) was by affinity descended from the common ancestor, 

 figuratively, of all anglers. 



WALTON S EOUSE. 



