The religious opinions of good men are of little importance to others, any farther than they necessarily conduce to virtuous practice; since we see, that as well the different persuasions of Papist and Protestant, as the several no less differing parties into which the Reformed Religion is unhappily subdivided, have produced men equally remarkable for their endowments, sincere in their professions, and exemplary in their lives. But were it necessary, after what has been above remarked of him, to be particular on this head, with respect to our author we should say, that he was a very dutiful son of the Church of England; nay further, that he was a friend to a hierarchy, or, as we should now call such a one, a high churchman; for which propensity of his, if it needs an apology, it may be said, that he had lived to see hypocrisy and fanaticism triumph in the subversion of both our ecclesiastical and civil constitution, - the important question of toleration had not been discussed, the extent of regal prerogative and the bounds of civil and religious liberty, had never been ascertained, - and he, like many other good men, might look on the interests of the Church, and those of Religion, as inseparable.

Besides the works of Walton abovementioned, there are extant, of his writing, Verses on the death of Dr. Donne, beginning, "Our Donne is dead"; Verses to his reverend friend the author of the "Synagogue," printed together with Herbert's "Temple"; Verses before Alexander Brome's Poems, octavo, 1646, and before Shirley's Poems, octavo, 1646, and before Cartwright's Plays and Poems, octavo, 1651. He wrote also the following Lines under an engraving of Dr. Donne, before his Poems, published in 1635.

"This was, - for youth, strength, mirth, and wit, - that

time

Most count their golden age; but was not thine :
Thine was thy later years; so much refined
From youth's dross, mirth, and wit, - as thy pure mind
Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best days.

Witness this book (thy emblem), which begins
With love; but ends with sighs and tears for sins."

A few moments before his death, our author made his will, which appears, by the peculiarity of many expressions contained in it, as well as by the hand, to be of his own writing. As there is something characteristic in this last solemn act of his life, it has been thought proper to insert an authentic copy thereof in this account of him; postponing it, only to the following reflections on his life and character.

Upon a retrospect of the foregoing particulars, and a view of some others mentioned in a subsequent letter and in his Will, it will appear that Walton possessed that essential ingredient in human felicity, "mens sana in corpore sano"; for in his eighty-third year he professes a resolution to begin a pilgrimage of more than a hundred miles into a country the most difficult and hazardous that can be conceived for an aged man to travel in, to visit his

friend Cotton,* and doubtless to enjoy his favorite diversion of angling in the delightful streams of the Dove; and on the ninetieth anniversary of his birthday, he, by his Will, declares himself to be of perfect memory.

* To this journey he seems to have been invited by Mr. Cotton, in the following beautiful Stanzas, printed with other of his Poems in 1689, 8vo. and addressed to his dear and most worthy friend, Mr. Isaac Walton :

" Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,

Where bleak winds howl and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time

Has been of many years before;

Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The chillest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made;

Whilst all the ills are so improved,
Of this dead quarter of the year,
That even you, so much beloved,
We would not now wish with us here:

In this estate, I say, it is

Some comfort to us to suppose,
That in a better clime than this

You, our dear friend, have more repose;

And some delight to me the while,
Though nature now does weep in rain,
To think that I have seen her smile,
And haply may I do again.

As to his worldly circumstances, - notwithstanding the adverse accident of his being obliged, by the troubles of the times, to quit London and his occupation, - they appear to have been commensurate, as well to the wishes as the wants of any but a covetous and intemperate man; and in his relations

If the all-ruling Power please
We live to see another May,
We 'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day.

We then shall have a day or two,
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly:

A day with not too bright a beam,
A warm, but not a scorching sun,
A southern gale to curl the stream,
And, master, half our work is done.

There, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray, —
We 'll prove it just, with treacherous bait
To make the preying Trout our prey.

And think ourselves, in such an hour,
Happier than those, though not so high,
Who, like Leviathans, devour
Of meaner men the smaller fry.

This, my best friend, at my poor home
Shall be our pastime and our theme;
But then, - should you not deign to come,
You make all this a flattering dream.

and connexions, such a concurrence of circumstances is visible, as it would be almost presumption to pray for. For, not to mention the patronage of those many prelates and dignitaries of the church, men of piety and learning, with whom he lived in a close intimacy and friendship; or the many ingenious and worthy persons with whom he corresponded and conversed; or the esteem and respect, testified by printed letters and eulogiums, which his writings had procured him, - to be matched with a woman of an exalted understanding and a mild and humble temper; to have children of good inclinations and sweet and amiable dispositions, and to see them well settled; is not the lot of every man that, preferring a social to a solitary life, chooses to become the head of a family.

But blessings like these are comparatively light, when weighed against those of a mind stored, like his, with a great variety of useful knowledge, and a temper that could harbour no malevolent thought or insidious design, nor stoop to the arts of fraud or flattery, but dispose him to love and virtuous friendship, to the enjoyments of innocent delights and recreations, to the contemplation of the works of Nature and the ways of Providence, and to the still sublimer pleasures of rational piety.

If, possessing all these benefits and advantages, external and internal (together with a mental constitution, so happily attempered as to have been to him a perpetual fountain of cheerfulness), we can entertain a doubt that Walton was one of the hap