other blessings, attending upon it." In another
place, the same speaker defends the pastime of
angling by the example of the apostles, who,
be it remembered, were fishermen by trade,
and fished, not for pleasure, but to get a
living. Here is some wondrous special pleading:
"Concerning which last—namely, the
Prophet Amos— I shall make but this observation,
that he that shall read the humble, lowly,
plain style of that prophet, and compare it with
the high, glorious, eloquent style of the Prophet
Isaiah, may easily believe Amos to be, not only
a shepherd, but a good-natured, plain fisherman.
Which I do rather believe by comparing the
affectionate, loving, lowly, humble Epistles of
St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, whom we
know were all fishers, with the glorious language
and high metaphors of St. Paul, who we may
believe was not. And for the lawfulness of fishing
it may very well be maintained by our
Saviour's bidding St. Peter cast his hook into
the water and catch a fish, for money to pay
tribute to Caesar." Here, again, is a verse from
the angler's song, in which the writer represents
himself to be a follower of the apostles in
angling: a pursuit, by-the-by, in which they
probably did not engage.

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon here
Blest fishers were, and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste.
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.

A man may as well say that, because Sir
Humphry Davy was fond of fishing as a
relaxation from scientific pursuits, he (the
reasoner) was a follower of Sir Humphry Davy,
because he was an angler. Here is a cruel bit
of Humbug from the same song:

And when the timorous trout I wait
To take, and he devours my bait,
How poor a thing sometimes I find
Will captivate a greedy mind.

The trout is not " greedy," but hungry, be it
observed, and this is a cruel and wicked perversion
of terms. A trout, angling for old Izaak,
about breakfast time, with a bit of that
"powdered beef" of which he was so fond, might
have applied the same term to this "gentle
angler" when he gobbled up the morsel, and,
indeed, might have spouted the whole of the
verse.

In an amiable little passage, again, directing
the harmless fisherman how to bait his hook
with a live frog, there occurs an expression
which the reader will view with abhorrence:
"Put your hook through his mouth, and out at
his gills, and then, with a fine needle and silk,
sew the upper part of his leg with only one
stitch to the arming-wire of your hook, or tie the
frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed
wire; and, in so doing, use him as though you
loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may
possibly, that he may live the longer." There
is a sanguinary treacherousness about this, "as
if you loved him," which almost makes one's
flesh creep.

But, as if to complete the evidence against
himself, and to prove that we have not
misjudged our old friend Izaak, we find him further
on in his celebrated treatise allying himself with
one whom we have just denounced as an especial
and Arch-Humbug: "Let me tell you, scholar,"
says our author, "that Diogenes walked, one
day, with a friend to see a country fair; where
he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and
nut-crackers, and fiddles and hobby-horses, and many
other gimcracks; and having observed them, and
all the other finnimbrums that make a complete
country fair, he said to his friend, 'Lord! how
many things are there in this world of which
Diogenes hath no need.' " Walton was a Humbug
of the Simple and Amiable sort.

Is not his portrait against him? No doubt
it was the fashion of the age in which he lived
to wear the hair long, and in curls; but this
does not excuse Izaak's style of coiffure, much
less a certain combination of intense amiability
with cunning and stinginess, which seems to me
to pervade his countenance: the latter qualities
being especially developed about the corners of
the mouth and among the crow's-feet which lie
near the eyes. As a general rule, I have
observed that men stricken in years, who wear
grey hair very long, put behind their ears, and
curling on the shoulders, are invariably Humbugs,
and are not uncommonly tremendous Bores
into the bargain.

When Burke in the middle of one of his most
splendid orations, suddenly plucked a dagger
from his bosom, and flinging it upon the floor
of the House of Commons, exclaimed, "This is
what you will gain by an alliance with France"
—when our illustrious statesman was guilty of
this performance, he perpetrated one of the
most complete and finished acts of Humbug on
record. Consider the preparation that must
have been made to carry this affair into effect.
Consider how the performer must have gone
to the drawer of his cabinet of curiosities to
search for that dagger, how he must have made
sure of its fitting easily in the sheath—for his
effect would have been ruined if it had stuck
at the last moment, or come out of his waistcoat
sheath and all—how he must have rehearsed
in his study the best way of flinging it
down, how he must have secreted it inside his
waistcoat, perhaps dined with it there, felt that
it was all right from time to time while chatting
freely with friends in the lobbies of the House,
given it a last loosening touch just before it was
wanted, and then—flourished it out with a gleam
and a twinkle before that august assembly!

Humbug is losing its hold upon the people of
the newer generation. It still has its votaries,
however, who cling to it—its votaries, its priesthood,
and its Temple— a certain mighty Hall
not a hundred miles from the Strand. I have
heard that in that same Hall the song of Sally
in our Alley may not be sung, because Sally's
lover asserts that of all the days in the week he
"dearly loves but one day,