16 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON ANGLING. 
Taking therein no little delectation, 
To think how strange, how wonderflil thoy be ; 
Framing thereof an inward contemplation 
To set his heart from other fancies free : 
And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, 
His mind is wrapt ubove the starry sky.” 
If Angling can give birth to such pleasant and wholesome 
thoughts as these, who will deny that it is an employment 
both profitable and amusing ? 
Walton further says, that « it is the contemplative man’s 
recreation ; for it is eminently calculated to still the stormy 
passions of the breast, and lead to the calm and tranquil 
pleasures arising from frequent meditation of the beauties of 
nature. ” What more powerful argument can the Angler have 
in justification of this amusement? Volumes could not have 
said more. 
Sir Humphrey Davy remarks: “ For my health, I may 
thank my ancestors, after my God: and I have not squander- 
dered what was so bountifully given : and though I do not 
expect, like our Arch-Patriarch Walton, to number ninety 
years and upwards, yet I hope as long as 1 can enjoy a vernal 
day, the warmth and light of the sunbeams, still to haunt the 
streams, following the example of our late venerable friend, 
the President of the Royal Academy,” with whom I have 
thrown the fly, caught trout, and enjoyed a delightful day of 
angling and social amusement, by the bright clear streams of 
the Wandle.” 
The celebrated Dr. Paley said, in reply to a person anx- 
ious about the completion of one of his great philosophical 
works, that ” it would be finished as soon as the fly-fishing 
season was over;” evidently considering this diversion of 
equal importance with those mental efforts that have render- 
ed his name almost immortal. 
Benjamin West. 
