178  ANGLING.
Is  this  cruelty  '(  Cruelty  should  be  made  of  sterner  stuff.'
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  tender-hearted  moralists.
who  croak  so  over  the  cruelty  of  angling,  and  think  it  a
dreadful  thing  to  trouble  a  trout  with  a  line  intimating
that  you  would  be  happy  to  see  him  at  supper,  rarely  re
fuse  to  eat  a  perch  or  trout  well  browned,  and  will  even
add  the  "  cool  malignity  "  of  salt  and  sauce.  To  all  such
crabbed  and  hypercritical  objectors  we  can  only  say  with
Horace  that  jubemus  stultos  esse  libenter,  while  from  our
heart  of  hearts  we  echo  the  sonp*  of  old  Izaak  :

o

"  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  your  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  ;  —

"jj|And  think  ourselves,  in  such  an  hour,

Happier  than  those,  though  not  so  high,
Who,  like  leviathans,  devour
Of  meaner  men  the  smaller  fry."


intellectual


fHE  London  "  Saturday  Review,"  speaking  of  the
many  pretty  things  said  in  play  by,Sydney  Smith,
remarks  that  none  of  the  sayings  of  that  obese  an-
~el  of  English  wits  throws  so  amiable  a  light  on  the  es
sential  vein  of  his  intellect,  its  playfulness,  as  that  re
corded  in  the  story  of  the  pretty  girl  and  the  sweet  peas.
