This day dame nature seem'd in love;
The lusty sap began to move,

Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines,
And birds had drawn their valentines.
The jealous trout, that low did lie,
Rose at a well dissembled fly;

There stood my friend, with patient skill,
Attending of his trembling quill;
Already were the eaves possessed
With the swift pilgrim's daubed nest;
The groves already did rejoice
In Philomel's triumphing voice;

The showers were short, the weather mild,
The morning fresh, the evening smil'd.
Joan takes her neat rubb'd pail, and now
She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
Where for some sturdy foot-ball swain,
Joan strokes a syllabub or twain.
The fields and gardens were beset
With tulips, crocus, violet;
And now, tho' late, the modest rose
Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all looks gay and full of cheer,
To welcome the new-liveried year!

Izaak Walton could lay no claim to be called a scholar in the strictest acceptation of the word. The necessity of devoting his mind to business early in life, probably prevented deep study such as in those days made such men as Wotton and Donne. But Walton was naturally studiously inclined, and he added keen observation and earnest application to study in the pursuit of any one subject. He has a happy art of turning every tiny grain of general information to advantage, and when to this talent he joined a vivid imagination, poetic fancy, and sincere religious feeling, we are not surprised at the unrivalled success of his 'Complete Angler' even in his own day. Making all due allowance for later

discoveries in natural science, nothing can be more thoroughly worked out than his object of affording complete instruction on the art of, angling. The merits of his book were recognised in his generation, and four editions successively appeared in the space of little more than twenty-three years. To the fourth edition, Izaak added many valuable directions given by Mr. Thomas Barker for fishing with the fly. But, considering 'angling to be so like mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt; at least, not so fully but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us,' honest Izaak, at eighty years of age, thought he might do better still by preparing a fifth edition of his work. To this was added a second part, from the pen of his intimate friend, and adopted son, Charles Cotton, of Beresford, in Staffordshire, Esq., entitled, 'Instructions how to angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear Stream.'

Beresford Hall, Mr. Cotton's residence, was situated near the river Dove, 'so called,' saith Izaak, 'from the swiftness of its current;' a river, he elsewhere adds, which I cannot but love above all the rest.'

O my beloved nymph, fair Dove
Princess of rivers, how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lic,
And view thy silvery stream,
When gilded by a summer's beam!
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty.

And with my angle upon them,

The all of treachery,

I ever learned, industriously to try

So sang the enthusiastic disciple of the Father of all Anglers,' the owner of Beresford Hall, who, on the river's flowing banks,' had erected a fishing house for the reception and entertainment of his friend and master. It was a stone building, and the room inside a cube of fifteen feet; over the door, as you entered, was the inscription, 'Piscatoribus Sacrum,' underneath which was a cipher, composed of the initials of Izaak and his friend. In the centre of the room, which was paved with black and white marble, there was a square table, also of black marble, and the wainscot was ornamented with carvings dividing each panel. In each panel was a picture. In the larger ones were scenes of the neighbouring country where people were represented fishing; and, in the lesser panels, the fishing rod and tackle, &c., had their proper places. The buffet, which stood on the right hand opposite to the fireplace on the left, opened with two folding doors, on which were painted portraits of 'Honest Izaak,' in the fishing costume of the day, and Mr. Cotton, with a servant lad.

Figures of trout and grayling, well designed, ornamented the door of a little cupboard underneath the buffet, and everything in the place bore some appropriate evidence for what the little dwelling was intended; a pleasant retreat, after a good morning's work, where the fish might be cooked, eaten, and washed down by the hungry anglers with a cup of Canary Sack, or a pull at Brown Bess.'

Standing in a kind of peninsula, with a clear delicate river about it,' this cosy fishing-house was a little paradise in the eyes of honest Izaak, and so loved he the scenery of the delicious neighbourhood

in which it stood, that, to use his own words, the pleasantness of the river, mountains and meadows about it, cannot be described, unless. Sir Philip Sidney or Mr. Cotton's father were again alive to do it.' It was a place too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays.' And here, indeed, with angle in hand, in calm and thoughtful contemplation on the lilies that take no care, and those very many other various little living creatures that are not only created, but fed (man knows not how), by the goodness of the God of Nature,' in a cheerful, contented, peaceful spirit, did the happiest days of honest old Izaak's long life glide away.

The spirit of thoroughness' with which Walton had taken up, from an early period, his duties, as well as his diversions, led him to labour till the latest hour of his life. It is unnecessary here to enumerate all the works, biographical as well as practical, which issued from his busy pen, during a long well-spent life. But to the aphorism, that 'one is never too old to learn,' Walton may be said practically to have added a second, and has shown us that 'one is never too old to work.' He had entered his eighty-third year, when he undertook to write the Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson,' Bishop of Lincoln; which, with a sermon of Hooker's, and some of the Bishop's pieces, was published in 1677. Nor did Izaak deem this sufficient; for, although at eighty-two, he considered he had attained an age which might have procured him a writ of ease, and secured him from all further trouble in that kind,' at ninety years of age, he again took up his pen to write a preface, with a description of the author, to a poem, entitled

Thealma and Clearchus,' by John Chalkhill, Esq., 'an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser.'

He did not long survive this last labour of a busy brain; for, on the 15th of December, in the year 1683, he breathed his last at Winchester, at the house of his son-in-law, Dr. William Hawkins. He left behind him two children, a son and daughter, who had had the happiness of ministering to the wants of his old age, and were spared the sorrow of seeing his mind, 'that perpetual fountain of cheerfulness,' diminished in its brightness, or deprived of its power. He retained his memory to the last, and died in peace with his Maker and his fellow-men, beloved and lamented by all.

Beloved he lived and died, o'ercharged with years,

Fuller of honours than of silver hairs,

And to sum up his virtues, this was he

Who was what all we should, but cannot be.

P