Note 35 — English Authors on Gardening.

Perhaps no one more truly painted rich pastoral scenes than Isaac Walton. This occurs in many, many pages of his delightful Angler. The late ardently gifted, and most justly lamented Sir Humphry Davy too, in his Salmonia, has fondly caught the charms of Walton's pages. His pen riots in the wild, the beautiful, the sweet, delicious scenery of nature:—"how delightful in the early spring, to wander forth by some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to scent the odours of the bank, perfumed by the violet, and enamelled as it were with the primrose, and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blossoms are filled with the music of the bee." Mr. Worlidge, in his Systema Agriculturæ, says, that the delights in angling "rouzes up the ingenious early in the spring mornings, that they have the benefit of the sweet and pleasant morning air, which many through sluggishness enjoy not; so that health (the greatest treasure that mortals enjoy) and pleasure, go hand in hand in this exercise. What can be more said of it, than that the most ingenious, most use it." Mr. Whately, in his usual charming style, thus paints the spring:—"Whatever tends to animate the scene, accords with the season, which is full of youth and vigour, fresh and sprightly, brightened by the verdure of the herbage, and the woods, gay with blossoms, and flowers, and enlivened by the songs of the birds in all their variety, from the rude joy of the skylark, to the delicacy of the nightingale."