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earth's green carpet has always a tendency to revive the imagination, comfort and strengthen the sight, and cause the most agreeable and pleasing sensations in the soul.

The earth

Brings forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green.

We shall reserve our observations on the particular pleasures of botany for a separate chapter.

The pleasures of the chase, and the various sports of the field, may be ranked among the delights of the country, and if not pursued to the neglect of more important duties, they may be denominated innocent and delightful recreations. These sports conduce to early rising, they renovate the faculties, divert the mind from melancholy, and renew it for redoubled exertions in laudable pursuits. Thus Shakspeare,

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We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the boar
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding. For, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, ev'ry region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew,
Crook-kneed, and dewlap'd, like Thessalian bulls
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each; a cry more tuneable

Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

In Mr. Warner's Topographical Remarks of Hamp shire, he mentions a curious Manuscript extant on the subject of hunting. It was written in the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Norman French, by William Turci, grand huntsinan to Edward the second. An ancient translation of it into English, occurs

among the Cottonian MSS. It begins thus, for it is a motley composition, partly verse, partly prose:~

Alle such dysport as voydeth (prevents) ydilnesse,
It sytteth (suits) every gentilman to knowe,
For myrthe anexed is to gentilnesse ;
Wherefore among all other, as I trowe,
To know the craft of hunting, and to blowe,
As this book shall witnesse, is ove (of) the beste,
For it is holsium, pleasaunt, and honeste.

It then enumerates and describes the different beasts that were objects of the chace in England; and proceeds, in the manner of a dialogue, to inform the huntsman how he ought to blow his horn, at the different points of the hunt.

A more tranquil amusement is derived from angling:
Oh! the gallant fisher's life,
It is the best of any;

'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,
And 'tis belov'd by many:
Other joys

Are but toys,

Only this
Lawful is,

For our skill

Breeds no ill,

But content and pleasure.

THE COMPLETE ANGLER, 1653.

When this sport is followed with spirit, it is said to afford a great variety of pleasure. The reader who delights in it will find much advantage in consulting "Walton's Complete Angler," the best publication on the subject. Angling has certainly one advantage over all other recreations, as it leaves the mind at full liberty to pursue a train of useful reflections :

Of recreations there is none
So free, as fishing is alone;
All other, pastimes do no less
Than mind and body both possess:
My hand alone my work can do,
So I can fish and study too.

ANGLER'S SONG.

Pope does not forget to notice the pleasures of angling :

In genial spring, beneath the quiv'ring shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmov'd, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
Our plenteous streams a various race supply;
The bright-ey'd perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
The silver eel in shining volumes roйl'd,
The yellow carp in scales bedropp'd with gold;
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains,

WINDSOR FOREST.

There is this difference between town and country amusements; that in the town, the amusements are commonly found for us, and we must pay for them: but, in the country, we generally find them for ourselves, and have them for nothing.

I shall make no apology for introducing in this place, the following curious remarks by Fuller, on recreations:

"Recreation is a second creation, when weariness hath almost annihilated one's spirits. It is the breathing of the soul, which otherwise would be stiffed with continual business. We may trespass in them, if using such as are forbidden by the lawyer, as against the statutes; physician, as against health; divine, as against conscience.

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Spill not the morning, the quintessence of the day, in recreations. For sleep itself is a recreation; add not therefore sauce to sauces; and he cannot properly have any title to be refreshed, who was not first faint. Pastime, like wine, is poyson in the morning. It is then good husbandry to sow the head, which hath lain fallow all night, with some serious work. Chiefly intrench not on the Lord's day to use unlawful sports; this were to spare thine own flock, and to sheere God's lamb.

"Let thy creations be ingenious, and bear proportion with thine age. If thou sayest with Paul, when I was a child, I did as a child; say also with him, but when I was a man, I put away childish things. Wear also the child's coat, if thou usest his sports.

"Take heed of boisterous and over-violent exercises. Ringing ofttimes hath made good musick on the bells, and put

men's bodies out of time, so that by overheating themselves they have rung their own passing-bell.

Yet the ruder sort of people scarce count any thing a sport which is not loud and violent. The Muscovite women esteem none loving husbands except they beat their wives. 'Tis no pasttime with country clowns, that cracks not pates, breaks not shins, bruises not limbs, tumbles and tosses not all the body. They think themselves not warm in their geeres, till they are all on fire; and count it but dry sport, till they swim in their own sweat. Yet I conceive the physician's rule in exercises, ad ruborem,' but 'non ad sudorem,' is too scant

measure.

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Refresh that part of thyself which is most wearied. If thy life be sedentary, exercise thy body; if stirring and active, recreate thy mind. But take heed of couzening the mind, in setting it to do a double task under pretence of giving it a play day, as in the labyrinth of chess, and other tedious and studious games.

"Yet recreations distasteful to some dispositions relish best to others. Fishing with an angle is to some rather a torture than a pleasure, to stand an hour as mute as the fish they mean to take; yet here, withal, Dr. Whittaker was much delighted. When some noblemen had gotten William Cecill, lord Burleigh and Treasurer of England, to ride with them a hunting, and the sport began to be cold; What call you this,' said the Treasurer? Oh! now,' said they, 'the dogs are at a fault.' 'Yea,' quoth the Treasurer, 'take me again in such a fault, and I'll give you leave to punish me.' Thus as soon may the same meat please all palates, as the same sport suit with all dispositions.

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"Walking, running, leaping, and dancing, are all excellent exercises. And yet those are the best recreations, which, besides refreshing, enable, at least dispose men to some other good ends. Bowling teaches men's hands and eyes mathematicks, and the rules of proportion; swimming hath saved many a man's life, when himself hath been both the wares and the ship: tilting and fencing is warre without anger; and manly sports are the grammar of military performance.

"But above all, shooting is a noble recreation, and an half liberal art. A rich man told a poor man,' that he walked to get a stomach for his meat:' And I,' said the poor man, 'walk to get meat for my stomach. Now shooting would have fitted both their turns; it provides food when men are hungry, and helps digestion when they are full. King Edward the Sixth, though he drew no strong bow, shot very well, and when once John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, commended him for hitting the mark; 'You shot better (quoth the king) when you shot off my good uncle Protectour's head.' But our age sees

his successour exceeding him in that art, whose eye, like his judgment, is clear and quick to discover the mark, and his hands as just in shooting as in dealing aright.

"Some sports being granted to be lawful, more propend to be ill than well used. Such I count stage-plays, when made alwaies the actour's work, and often the spectator's recreation. Zeuxis, the curious picturer, painted a boy holding a dish full of grapes in his hand, done so lively, that the birds being deceived, flew to peck the grapes. But Zeuxis, in an ingenious choller, was angry with his own workmanship. 'Had I (said he) made the boy as lively as the grapes, the birds would have been afraid to touch them.' Thus two things are set forth to us in stage-players: some grave sentences, prudent counsels, and punishment of vitious examples; and, with these, desperate oaths, lustful talk, and riotous acts, are so personated to the life, that wantons are tickled with delight, and feed their palats upon them. It seems the goodness is not pourtrayed out with equal accents of liveliness as the wicked things are, otherwise men would be deterred from vitious courses, with seeing the woeful success which follows them. But the main is, wanton speeches spoken there be God's ordinance to increase goodness, as wanting both his institution and benediction.

"Choak not thy soul with immoderate pouring in the cordial of pleasures. The creation lasted but six dayes of the first week: prophane they, whose recreation lasts seven dayes every week. Rather abridge thyself of thy lawful liberty herein it being a wary rule which S. Gregory gives us, 'Solus in illicitus non cadit, qui se aliquando et a licitus caute restringit.' And then recreations shall both strengthen labour and sweeten rest, and we may expect God's blessing and protection on us in following them, as well as in doing our work: for he that saith grace for his meat, in it prayes also to God to bless the sauce unto him. As for those that will not take lawful pleasure, I am afraid they will take unlawful pleasure, and, by lacing themselves too hard, grow awry on one side."

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