CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 15 



that his great soul, over which had swept floods of emo- 

 tion such as few other human souls have ever experi- 

 enced, was yet so fresh and young, even in the days of 

 rock-bound Patmos, and long after at Ephesus, when he 

 counted a hundred years of life, that in sleep he some- 

 times sat in his boat, rocked by the waves of the blue 

 Gennesaret, his black locks shaking in the breeze that 

 came down from Hermon, his eyes wandering from Ta- 

 bor to Gilboa, from Gilboa to Lebanon, from Lebanon to 

 the wild hills of the Gadarenes, while he caught the shy 

 but beautiful fish that were born in the Jordan, and lived 

 in the waters that were by Capernaum and Bethsaida? 



To you, my friend, who know nothing of the gentle and 

 purifying associations of the angler's life, these may seem 

 strange notions to some, indeed, they may even sound 

 profane. But the angler for whom I write will not so 

 think them, nor may I, who, thinking these same thoughts, 

 have cast my line on the Sea of Galilee, and taken the 

 descendants of old fish in the swift waters of the Jordan. 



Trout-fishing is employment for all men, of all minds. 

 It tends to dreamy life, and it leads to much thought and 

 reflection. I do not know in any book or story of mod- 

 ern times a more touching and exquisite scene than that 

 which Mrs. Gordon gives in her admirable biography of 

 her father, the leonine Christopher North, when the fee- 

 ble old man waved his rod for the last time over the Doc- 

 hart, where he had taken trout from his boyhood. Shall 

 we ever look upon his like again ? He was a giant 

 among men of intellectual greatness. Of all anglers 

 since apostolic days, he was the greatest ; and there is 

 no angler who does not look to him with veneration 

 and love, while the English language will forever possess 

 higher value that he has lived and written. It would be 



