Our author, however, takes a more special defence, by observing that, unlike old Isaac, he employs an artificial fly, instead of a living bait. Our notions about the cruelty of field sports is extremely capricious. Until the time of the Reformation, the canon law prohibited the use of the sanguinary recreations of hunting, hawking, and fowling, while the clergy, on account of their leisure, were allowed to exercise the harmless and humane art of angling. In later days, the indignation against this art has been excited by the supposed sufferings of the worm or bait, rather than by those of the fish; and thus far the author of Salmonia assumed a strong posture of defence; but he did not avail himself of all the advantages it commanded. He might have pleaded, that every fish he caught by his artificial fly was destined to prey upon an insect, and that by substituting a piece of silk for the latter, he would for every fish he might destroy, save from destruction many of those fairy beings that animate the air and sparkle in the sunbeam;--but it is, after all, folly to argue upon the subject of cruelty in our field sports. That animals should live by preying upon each other is the very basis of the scheme of creation; and in these days it is not necessary to expose the absurdities of the system of Samos and Indostan. Dr. Franklin, at one period of his life, entertained a sentimental abhorrence at eating any thing that had possessed life; and the reader may, perhaps, not object to be reminded of the manner in which he was cured of his prejudice. "I considered," says he, "the capture of every fish as a sort of murder, committed without provocation, since these animals had neither done, nor were capable of doing, the smallest injury to any one that should justify the measure. This mode of reasoning I conceived to be unanswerable. Meanwhile, I had formerly been extremely fond of fish; and when one of the cod was taken out of the frying-pan, I thought its flavour delicious. I hesitated some time between principle and inclination, till at last recollecting that, when the cod had been opened, some small fish were found in its belly, I said to myself, 'If you eat each other, I see no reason why we may not eat you,'--(His "wish was father to that thought")--I accordingly dined on the cod with no small degree of pleasure, and have since continued to eat like the rest of mankind." HALIEUS is made to admit the danger of analysing too closely the moral character of any of our field sports; and yet, in the concluding chapter, he very unfairly and inconsistently attempts to ridicule the pursuit of a fox-hunter, "risking his neck to see the hounds destroy an animal which he preserves to be destroyed, and which is good for nothing." He who pursues a pleasure because it is rational, reasons because he cannot feel. "When the heart," says Sterne, "flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains."