66 In his will there is this remarkable passage: My worldly estate, which I have nether got by falsehood or flattery, or the extreme crewelty of the law of this nation.' This cruelty, I have no doubt, was the power which the law put into the hands of evil landlords. On this subject Walton held opinions which, if put in practice, would have prevented the social miseries of Ireland and the consequent political retribution which England is compelled to suffer for them. This is all the more creditable to him because he was by temperament and principle conservative, and not only a friend to that order of the Universe which was by law established in Church and State, but a lover of it. He tells of a pitiless landlord who was a parishioner of Sanderson, and of Sanderson's successful dealing with him, and adds: "It may be noted that in this age there are a sort of people so unlike the God of Mercy, so void of the bowels of pity, that they love only themselves and children, love them so as not to be concerned whether the rest of mankind waste their days in sorrow and shame, -people that are cursed with riches and a mistake that nothing but riches can make them and theirs happy." The character of Walton's friendships and his fidelity to them when prorogued by death bear ample witness to the fine quality of his nature. How amiably human it was he betrays at every turn, yet with all his bonhomie there is a dignity which never forgets itself or permits us to forget it. We may apply to him what he says of Sir Henry Wotton's father: that he was a man of great 66 modesty, of a most plain and single heart, of an ancient freedom and integrity of mind," and may say of him, as he says of Sir Henry himself, that he had "a most persuasive behavior." His friends loved to call him "honest Izaak." He speaks of his own "simplicity and harmlessness," and tells us that his humor was "to be free and pleasant and civilly merry," and that he "hated harsh censures." He makes it a prime quality of the gentleman to be "communicable." He had no love of money, and compassionates those who are "condemned to be rich." He was a staunch royalist and churchman, loved music, painting, good ale, and a pipe, and takes care to tell us that a certain artificial fly was made by a handsome woman and with a fine hand." But what justifies and ennobles these lower loves, what gives him a special and native aroma like that of Alexander, is that above all he loved the beauty of holiness and those ways of taking and of spending life that make it wholesome for ourselves and our fellows. His view of the world is not of the widest, but it is the Delectable Mountains that bound the prospect. Never surely was there a more lovable man, nor one to whom love found access by more avenues of sympathy. 66 There are two books which have a place by themselves and side by side in our literature, — Walton's "Complete Angler" and White's "Natural History of Selborne;" and they are books, too, which have secured immortality without showing any tincture of imagination or of constructive faculty, in the gift of one or the other of which that |