PISHING AS A SPORT. 93 



A perfect angler is indeed a perfect man — our old friend, the 

 Terpaycovos avrjp of Aristotle — a many-sided and a square- 

 sided man — a " perfect cube ;" one, who always presents 

 a face and square side uppermost in all emergencies. 



Anglers, too, enjoy the consciousness that their sport 

 has less drawbacks than almost any other pastime that 

 can be named ; and though by no means cynics or misan- 

 thropes, they feel that Thomas Weaver was not far wrong, 

 when he said, — 



" All pleasures, but the angler's, bring 

 I' the tail repentance, like a sting :" 



while the harmlessness of their amusement is an additional 

 source of happiness. It is not "merely a pretty way of 

 putting things/' where Wotton sings of the fisherman 

 as one, — 



" Who with his angle and his books 



Can think the longest day well spent ; 

 And praises God when back he looks, 

 And finds that all was innocent." 



As a recreation for professional men, the brain-workers 

 of the human tribe, those who are liable to mental 

 exhaustion in callings which involve continuous attention 

 at a high pressure, and not infrequently induce mental 

 depression, there is in my opinion nothing to be compared 

 with fishing. No men stand more in need of periodical 

 rest than our hard-worked clergy, barristers, physicians, 

 and literary and scientific men ; and the best kind of rest 

 is that combined with recreation of a character which shall 

 not further exhaust them. I hold it to be a most fatal mis- 

 take to suppose that the best means of recuperating an 

 overwrought, a jaded or depressed mind, is to take violent 

 bodily exercise, in the way, for instance, of Alpine climbing, 



