Page:Sea and River-side Rambles in Victoria.djvu/114

95 we long with them to wander "ankle deep in flowers" all the day through, casting off the feeling that there are such things as petty jealousies and rivalries every where surrounding us in our contact with mankind;—surely the communing with nature does much to soften down these feelings to which unhappily we are all more or less prone, and teaches us what mere specks we are in creation, and how much enjoyment might be had during our comparatively brief existence did we go the right way to work to find it. The lover of Nature becomes imbued with a kindly feeling to every living thing, and this surely must in a great measure be extended to his fellows.

There is a truth in the saying of old Isaac Walton, that the mere sitting by a river's side, is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation but will invite one to it. A Spanish writer too says, that "Rivers, and the inhabitants of the watery element, were made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without contemplation." Now, although we do not for one moment pretend that our Rivers rival those of Epirus, or Selarus, or the dancing waters of Elusuria, mentioned by our quaint piscator, or even those by which we have strolled at nightfall in the old country—the shrill scream of the Otter, the chorus of the Night-jar, the heavy splash of the Water-Rat, and the hoot of the Owl, the only sounds which disturbed the stillness, save and except the rising now and then of a splendid trout to our fly (for a lover have we been too of the gentle craft, and a paper of hackles even now recalls all the old scenes and excursions), still they have their own beauties, believe