X LIFE OF WALTON. 



esteem and respect, testified by printed letters and eulog-iums, which his 

 writings had procured him to be matched with a woman of an ex- 

 alted 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 that, 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 insiduous design, nor stoop to the arts of fraud or flattery/ but 

 dispose him to love and virtuous friendship, to the enjoyments of in- 

 nocent delights and recreations, to the contemplation of the works of 

 Nature, and the ways of Providence, and to the still sublimcr pleasures 

 of rational piety. 



It. 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 shew 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 God, to arrive. 



(I) rUeto/ra, in his Will. 



(1) See his Preface, wherein he declares that though lie can be serious 

 at seasonable limes, he is a lover of innocent, harmless mirth, and that his 

 book to * picture ^ kit own dUfotUion. 



