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Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drownèd he that drains.
Not who first see the rising sun commands,
But who could first discern the rising lands.
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord, and country's father, speak.
To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Hence some small dikegrave unperceived invades
The power, and grows, as 'twere, a king of spades;
But, for less envy some joined states endures,
Who look like a commission of the sewers:
For these half-anders, half-wet and half-dry,
Nor bear strict service, nor pure liberty.
"Tis probable religion, after this,

Came next in order; which they could not miss.
How could the Dutch but be converted, when
The apostles were so many fishermen?
Besides, the waters of themselves did rise,
And, as their land, so them did re-baptize;
Though herring for their God few voices missed,
And Poor-John to have been the Evangelist.
Faith, that could never twins conceive before,
Never so fertile, spawned upon this shore
More pregnant than their Margret, that laid down
For Hands-in-Kelder of a whole Hans-Town.
Sure, when religion did itself embark,

And from the east would westward steer its ark,
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground,
Each one thence pillaged the first piece he found:
Hence Amsterdam, Turk, Christian, Pagan, Jew,
Staple of sects, and mint of schism grew;

That bank of conscience, where not one so strange Opinion, but finds credit, and exchange.

In vain for Catholics ourselves we bear:
The universal church is only there.

IZAAK WALTON.

THIS amiable enemy of the finny tribe was born in Stafford, in August 1593. We hear of him first as settled in London, following the trade of a sempster, or linen-draper, having a shop in the Royal Burse, in Cornhill, which was 'seven feet and a half long, and five wide,' and where he became possessed of a moderate fortune. He spent his leisure time in fishing 'with honest Nat and R. Roe.' From the Royal Burse, he removed to Fleet Street, where he had 'one half of a shop,' a hosier occupying the other half. In 1632, he married Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken of Furnival's Inn, and sister of Dr Ken, the celebrated Bishop of Bath and Wells. Through her and her kindred, he became acquainted with many eminent men of the day. His wife, a woman of remarkable prudence and primitive piety,' died long before him. He retired from business in 1643, and lived, for forty years after, a life of leisure and quiet enjoyment, spending much of his time in the houses of his friends, and much of it by the still waters, which he so dearly loved. Walton commenced his literary career by writing a Life of Dr Donne, and followed with another of Sir Henry Wotton, prefixed to his literary remains. In 1653 appeared his 'Complete Angler,' four editions of which were called for before his decease. He wrote, in 1662, a Life of Richard Hooker; in 1670, a Life of George Herbert; and, in 1678, a Life of Bishop Sanderson-all distinguished by naïveté and heart. In 1680, he published an anonymous discourse on the 'Distempers of the Times.' In 1683, he printed, as we have

Chalkhill's Thealma and Clearchus;' and on the 15th of December in the same year, he died at Winchester, while residing with his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, Prebendary of Winchester Cathedral.

Your

Walton is one of the most loveable of all authors. admiration of him is always melting into affection. Red as his

hand 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 WitchPeaks 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 tc 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 (6 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 Bryan1 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.

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.

John Wilmot was the son of Henry, Lord Rochester, and was born April 10, 1647, at Ditchley in Oxfordshire. He was taught grammar at the school of Burford. He then entered a nobleman' into Wadham College, when twelve years old, and at 1661, when only fourteen, he was, in conjunction with some others of rank, made M.A. by Lord Clarendon in person. Pursuing his travels in France and Italy, he went in 1665 to sea with the Earl of Sandwich, and distinguished himself at Bergen in an attack on the Dutch fleet. Next year, while

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serving under Sir Edward Spragge, his commander sent him in the heat of an engagement with a reproof to one of his captainsa duty which Wilmot gallantly accomplished amidst a storm of shot. With this early courage some of his biographers have contrasted his subsequent reputation for cowardice, his slinking away out of street-quarrels, his refusing to fight the Duke of Buckingham, &c. This diversity at different periods may perhaps be accounted for on the ground of the nervousness which continued dissipation produces, and perhaps from his poetical temperament. A poet, we are persuaded, is often the bravest, and often the most pusillanimous of men. Byron was unquestionably in general a brave, almost a pugnacious man; and yet he confesses that at certain times, had one proceeded to horsewhip him, he would not have had the hardihood to resist. Shelley, who, in a tremendous storm, behaved with dauntless heroism, and who would at any time have acted on the example of his own character in 'Prometheus,' who, in a shipwreck,

'gave an enemy

His plank, then plunged aside to die,'

was yet subject to paroxysms of nervous horror, which made him perspire and tremble like a spirit-seeing steed. Rochester had the same temperament, and a similar creed, with these men, although inferior to them both in morale and in genius.

His character was certainly very depraved. He told Burnet on his deathbed that for five years he had not known the sensation of sobriety, having been all that time either totally drunk, or mad through the dregs of drunkenness. He on one occasion, while in this state, erected a stage on Tower Hill, and addressed the mob as a naked mountebank. Even after he became more temperate, he continued and even increased his licentiousness— one devil went out, and seven entered in. He pursued low amours in disguise; he practised occasionally as a quack doctor; and at other times he retired to the country, and, like Byron, amused himself by libelling all his acquaintances-every line in each libel being a lie. Notwithstanding all this, he was a favourite with Charles II., who made him one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, and comptroller of Woodstock Park. In his lucid intervals he recurred to his studies, wrote occasional

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