traits which mark a man above his fellows. To begin with, he has a fine sense of the true pleasures of life and the aims which are worth the following. It is told of Stoddart, the great poet of fishing, that once when he went to visit a friend he was asked what his profession might then be. The answer is immortal. "Man," said the fisherman, "man, I'm an angler!" This is the true spirit of the brotherhood, a fine contempt for vulgar ambition and a knowledge of better things. Then there is a "camaraderie" among them, a good fellowship which knows no distinction between Charles Cotton, the great gentleman, and plain Master Izaak Walton, linen-draper in Fleet Street. To add to this, there is a freshness about them, a smell of the country and summer flowers, and a mellow wisdom, "the harvest of the quiet eye" and the heart not dulled to the finer influences of Nature.
So in the poetry of the art we discern many good qualities, — a geniality and humour which in the hands of inferior masters now and then becomes farce, but at its best is delicate and fanciful; a nervous force