Walton is one of the most loveable of all authors. Your admiration of him is always melting into affection. Red as his and is with the blood of fish, you pant to grasp it and press it to yours. You go with him to the fishing as you would with a bright-eyed boy, relishing his simple-hearted enthusiasm, and leaning down to listen to his precocious remarks, and to pat his curly head. It is the prevalence of the childlike element which makes Walton's 'Angler' rank with Bunyan's 'Pilgrim,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and White's 'Natural History of Selborne,' as among the most delightful books in the language. Its descriptions of nature, too, are so fresh, that you smell to them as to a green leaf. Walton would not have been at home fishing in the Forth or Clyde, or in such rivers as are found in Norway, the milk-blue Logen, or the grass- green Rauma, uniting, with its rich mediation, Romsdale Horn to the tremendous Witch-Peaks which lower on the opposite side of the valley; --the waters of his own dear England, going softly and somewhat drowsily on their path, are the sources of his inspiration, and seem to sound like the echoes of his own subdued but gladsome spirit. Johnson defined angling as a rod with a fish at one end, and a fool at the other; in Walton's case, we may correct the expression to 'a rod with a fish at one end, and a fine old fellow--the "ae best fellow in the world"--at the other'-- 'In wit a man, simplicity a child.' We have given a specimen of the verse he intersperses sparingly in a book which _is itself a complete poem._ THE ANGLER'S WISH. 1 I in these flowery meads would be: These crystal streams should solace me, To whose harmonious bubbling noise I with my angle would rejoice: Sit here and see the turtle-dove Court his chaste mate to acts of love: 2 Or on that bank feel the west wind Breathe health and plenty: please my mind To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers, And then washed off by April showers! Here hear my Kenna sing a song, There see a blackbird feed her young, 3 Or a leverock build her nest: Here give my weary spirits rest, And raise my low-pitched thoughts above Earth, or what poor mortals love; Or, with my Bryan[1] and my book, Loiter long days near Shawford brook: 4 There sit by him and eat my meat, There see the sun both rise and set, There bid good morning to next day, There meditate my time away, And angle on, and beg to have A quiet passage to the grave. [1] Probably his dog. JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER We hear of the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but, if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is one of the chief marvels of this marvellous world.