234 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



peculiar sentiments, thundered forth their anathemas against 

 pork. 



But, while the ancient defamers of the hog's good name have 

 been stripped of their glory and power ; while Egypt has been 

 reduced to a mere graveyard of her ancient renown, and the 

 ruins of her former glory have become her national tombstones ; 

 while the Jews have been scattered and peeled, and become the 

 subjects of an inveterate prejudice, such as their fathers fast- 

 ened upon the unoffending swine ; while clouds and darkness 

 have settled around the home of the Mussulman; the hog has 

 perseveringly rooted on, in the line of his humble vocation, and 

 Providence, as a reward for the patient fidelity with which he 

 pursues his daily round of duties, has gradually been rooting 

 from the hearts of men the prejudice that has so long existed 

 against him. He has — unlike his ancient defamers — steadily 

 pursued the highway of progress ; kept pace with the advance 

 of civilization, and has gradually developed his physical attri- 

 butes, until he has become the most important of all the do- 

 mestic animals, a favorite with the most enlightened nations of 

 the earth. 



In this he strikingly illustrates the truth, which is sometimes 

 brought to our notice in other departments of the divine econ- 

 omy, that modest merit, though obscure in its position, and 

 called to struggle against the Avithering breath of slander and 

 the thick foggy vapors of a "fogie" conservatism, is neverthe- 

 less destined, "by patient continuance in well doing," to over- 

 come all adverse circumstances, and, emerging into the light of 

 a better day, cause its own worth to be acknowledged and ap- 

 preciated. 



The life of the hog, though not allowed to be strictly a poetic 

 one, is not entirely devoid of some points of interest, and, but for 

 our ancient prejudices, might furnish analogies and types for 

 the pen of the poet, the theologian and the philosopher. Stud- 

 ied witli this view, he might be found to produce metaphorical 

 illustrations of the popular law of progress, the abstruse doc- 

 trine of discreet degrees, and the modern dogma of manifest 

 destiny, besides furnishing a glowing type of that passive char- 

 acter thajt is sometimes met with at the present day. 



The hog confines himself — with the proper humility of one 

 who knows his place — to the exact sphere that nature has 



