INTRODUCTORY 13 



a full one ; he accepts ill fortune with resignation, 

 and rejoices in good, as in an unconjectured grace. 

 A pleasure in prospect is a pleasure already partially 

 discounted ; our liveliest pleasures are those that come 

 upon us unawares. The source of my delight in the 

 most memorable fishing I have ever had was not in 

 the quality of the sport, for I have met with better, but 

 in its unexpectedness. 

 Detained, by unhappy 

 circumstance, within the 

 precincts of a dull, unin- 

 teresting German Dorf, 

 where life threatened to 



become as dreary as that of Mariana in her moated 

 grange, I was, to my surprise, given abundant occupa- 

 tion for the rod I had taken with me on the quite 

 unlikely chance of finding an opportunity of using it. 

 Angling had been no part of my plan : it was a 

 remote contingency on which I had bestowed but little 

 thought, and the unlooked for privilege of casting 

 an angle in the trout and grayling haunted stream 

 meandering through the cowslip-spangled meadow just 

 without the village gates, afforded me a joy that was 

 not to be expressed in terms of weight or number. 

 There are those who assure us that in the contem- 



