Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ARTICLE XII Davy's Salmonia. This article on Salmonia, Or Dats OF Fly-fishing, a tmall volume by Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., P.R.S., appeared in the Quarterly Review, for October, 1828.] When great men condescend to trifle, they desire that those who witness their frolics should have some kindred sympathy with the subject which these regard. The speech of Henry IV. to the Spanish ambassador, when he discovered the King riding round the room on a stick, with his son, is well known. You are a father, Seig- nor Ambassador, and so we will finish our ride. No doubt, there was to be remarked something graceful in the manner with which the hero of Navarre bestrode even a cane?something so kind in his expression, while employed in the most childish of pastimes, as failed not to remind the spectator that the indulgent father of his playmate was the no less indulgent father of his people. In taking up this elegant little volume, for which we are indebted to the most illustrious and successfulinvestigator of inductive philosophy which this age- has produced, we are led to expect to discover the sage even in his lightest amusements. We are informed, in the preface, that many months of severe and dangerous illness have heen partially occupied and amused by the present treatise, when the author was incapable of attending to more useful studies or more serious pursuits. While we regret that the current of scientific investigation, which has led to such brilliant results, should be, for a moment, interrupted, we have here an example, and a pleasing one, that the lightest pursuits of such a man as our angler?nay, the productions of those languid hours, in which lassitude succeeds to pain, are more interesting and instructive than the exertion of the talents of others -whose mind a...