80 Fly-Fifoing. 



Strange, Pifcator, that all this ftiould delight us 

 now as much as ever. 



Permit me to attempt a folution of the fecret, 

 in fome degree at leaft : 



The pleafures that pall upon the appetite moft 

 fearch and fee if they trefpafs not againft fome plain 

 rule of judgment, or difcretion, or morality, or 

 religion ? Purfued, perhaps, at the facrifice of 

 health and domeftic comfort ; or beyond time's 

 nice proportion that is weighed out to us, as it 

 were, in equal balances to enable all needful things 

 to be done in order; or at the infane coft of every 

 high and noble feeling of felf-refpect ; or the total 

 abandonment of that myfterious warning that fails 

 not to reach every ear, though it may not move 

 every heart ? But are there any painful draw- 

 backs like thefe attendant on the pleafure we feel 

 in haunting the ftreams in the fpring and early 

 days of fummer, to ply our gentle art ? 



I will not ilop to put the argument into fuch a 

 fyllogiftic fhape as would fmack of Oxford and 

 Whateley, but merely remark, that the endurance 

 of the above pleafure may, in a great degree, be 

 reduced to its entire freedom from that dead 

 weight (fo to fpeak) that drags other pleafures 

 fooner or later to the ground, and makes them fo 

 vapid and valuelefs. 



