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Article NOTES ON LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. ← Page 2 of 6 →
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Notes On Literature, Science, And Art.
mason are now issued . On referring to the life of that " meek old angler , knight of hook and line , " by Sir John Hawkins , I find he states : — " His first settlement in London , as a shopkeeper , was in the Eoyal Burse in Cornhill , budt by Sir Thomas Gresham , and finished in 1567 . In this situation he could scarcely be said to have elbow-room ; for the shops over the Burse were but seven feet and a half long , ancl five wide ; yet here did he carry on his trade , till some time before the year 1624 ; when ' he
dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street , in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery Lane , and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow . ' Now , the old timber house at the south-west corner of Chancery Lane , in Fleet Street , till within these few years , was known by that sign : it is therefore beyond doubt that Walton lived at the very next door . And in this house he is , in the deed above referred to , which bears date 1624 , said to have followed the trade of a linen-draper . It farther appears by that deed , that the house was in the joint occupation of Izaak Walton and John Mason , hosier ; whence we may conclude , that half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton . "
In 1632 , Walton was living in Chancery Lane , and left London about 1643 . Comparatively small as London then was to the mighty metropolis of our day , it was not the place for the bucolic mind of the good old angler , however often he may have stretched his legs up Tottenham Hill , or drank his morning's draught at the Thatched House in Hodsden , or angled in the Lea , or the upper portion of the Thames . As I publicly stated a quarter of a century ago : — " Of ad the writers who have made
angling their theme , none please us like honest Izaak . There is a quaint simplicity about his book , which shews us that he had not only made angling his study , but nature as well ; and the exquisite bursts of pathos and genuine sentiment to be met with in every page of The Complete Angler tell one at once that this prince of anglers possessed a mind ever awake to the beautif id , the good , and the true . I do not say that his intellect was of the very hihest orderbut his heart was in the riht laceand
overg ; gp , flowed with devotion to his Maker , and with love towards his fellowmen . He was not , like brave John Hampden , the man marked out by Heaven to resist the unconstitutional levying of taxes to which the representatives of the people had given no sanction in Parliament ; he was no Shakspere , with matchless skill , to delineate all possible phases of humanity , and then , having exhausted his theme , to conjure up a world of his own creation , filled with an infinite variety of strange sprites , from a lovely Ariel to a
loathsome Caliban ; he was no Bacon , to overturn the time-honoured philosophy of Aristotle , and replace it by a more reasonable one ; nor was he , like his contemporary , William Harvey , to benefit science , by discovering how the life-supporting fluid flows in scarlet streams , rich in oxygen , down human arteries , and returns , purpled with carbonic acid , up the veins , to be purified again in the lungs , ancl pumped once more to the remotest extremity of the bod : but in his own province—that of vividlrecalling to the ' mind ' s
y , y eye' of the reader some of the most lovely sylvan spots and quiet nooks of merry England , —he stands almost without a rival down to the present time , enriched though our literature has since become by the genial descriptions of such writers as Pemberton , the Howitts , Tom MUler , and Spencer Hall . "
" The mdk of that valuable animal , the Welsh sheep , " says Lady Llanover , " when mingled with that of the cow , produces cheese which is not only excellent to eat new , but , when old , is more like Parmesan than anything else I ever tasted . " Of the Welsh goats she remarks : — " They are much handsomer than the foreign goats with which I am acquainted . It is surprising that no specimen of the real Welsh goat is preserved in the Zoological Gardens . The Welsh goat , being an aboriginal of Britain , ought to be
specially protected , whereas it appears that the breed is likely to become extinct . The gallant regiment of the Welsh Fusiliers ought to protest against this neglect of an animal which has always been associated with Welsh regiments and the Principality of Wales . The Welsh goat has a very picturesque appearance , from its long coat and beautif idly formed head . There are two species equally aboriginal ; one with magnificent horns , and the other without horns . " And she adds : — " The she-goat gives , when in .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Notes On Literature, Science, And Art.
mason are now issued . On referring to the life of that " meek old angler , knight of hook and line , " by Sir John Hawkins , I find he states : — " His first settlement in London , as a shopkeeper , was in the Eoyal Burse in Cornhill , budt by Sir Thomas Gresham , and finished in 1567 . In this situation he could scarcely be said to have elbow-room ; for the shops over the Burse were but seven feet and a half long , ancl five wide ; yet here did he carry on his trade , till some time before the year 1624 ; when ' he
dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street , in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery Lane , and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow . ' Now , the old timber house at the south-west corner of Chancery Lane , in Fleet Street , till within these few years , was known by that sign : it is therefore beyond doubt that Walton lived at the very next door . And in this house he is , in the deed above referred to , which bears date 1624 , said to have followed the trade of a linen-draper . It farther appears by that deed , that the house was in the joint occupation of Izaak Walton and John Mason , hosier ; whence we may conclude , that half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton . "
In 1632 , Walton was living in Chancery Lane , and left London about 1643 . Comparatively small as London then was to the mighty metropolis of our day , it was not the place for the bucolic mind of the good old angler , however often he may have stretched his legs up Tottenham Hill , or drank his morning's draught at the Thatched House in Hodsden , or angled in the Lea , or the upper portion of the Thames . As I publicly stated a quarter of a century ago : — " Of ad the writers who have made
angling their theme , none please us like honest Izaak . There is a quaint simplicity about his book , which shews us that he had not only made angling his study , but nature as well ; and the exquisite bursts of pathos and genuine sentiment to be met with in every page of The Complete Angler tell one at once that this prince of anglers possessed a mind ever awake to the beautif id , the good , and the true . I do not say that his intellect was of the very hihest orderbut his heart was in the riht laceand
overg ; gp , flowed with devotion to his Maker , and with love towards his fellowmen . He was not , like brave John Hampden , the man marked out by Heaven to resist the unconstitutional levying of taxes to which the representatives of the people had given no sanction in Parliament ; he was no Shakspere , with matchless skill , to delineate all possible phases of humanity , and then , having exhausted his theme , to conjure up a world of his own creation , filled with an infinite variety of strange sprites , from a lovely Ariel to a
loathsome Caliban ; he was no Bacon , to overturn the time-honoured philosophy of Aristotle , and replace it by a more reasonable one ; nor was he , like his contemporary , William Harvey , to benefit science , by discovering how the life-supporting fluid flows in scarlet streams , rich in oxygen , down human arteries , and returns , purpled with carbonic acid , up the veins , to be purified again in the lungs , ancl pumped once more to the remotest extremity of the bod : but in his own province—that of vividlrecalling to the ' mind ' s
y , y eye' of the reader some of the most lovely sylvan spots and quiet nooks of merry England , —he stands almost without a rival down to the present time , enriched though our literature has since become by the genial descriptions of such writers as Pemberton , the Howitts , Tom MUler , and Spencer Hall . "
" The mdk of that valuable animal , the Welsh sheep , " says Lady Llanover , " when mingled with that of the cow , produces cheese which is not only excellent to eat new , but , when old , is more like Parmesan than anything else I ever tasted . " Of the Welsh goats she remarks : — " They are much handsomer than the foreign goats with which I am acquainted . It is surprising that no specimen of the real Welsh goat is preserved in the Zoological Gardens . The Welsh goat , being an aboriginal of Britain , ought to be
specially protected , whereas it appears that the breed is likely to become extinct . The gallant regiment of the Welsh Fusiliers ought to protest against this neglect of an animal which has always been associated with Welsh regiments and the Principality of Wales . The Welsh goat has a very picturesque appearance , from its long coat and beautif idly formed head . There are two species equally aboriginal ; one with magnificent horns , and the other without horns . " And she adds : — " The she-goat gives , when in .