THE FOOD OF ANIMALS. 475 



after, and so on a victim to his tyrant appetite, whilst his inferiors 

 know not what sickness is, and pass a life of vigour and of joy. In 

 fact, whole communities of men and women must submit to their 

 fate with due resignation : and they may comfort themselves with the 

 thought that by physic and physicians they can struggle on to a fair 

 old age, whilst the beast of the field can arrive at the same without 

 the aid of either. At the time that gout is destroying the symmetry 

 of our originally fine form, and rheumatism arresting our inherent 

 activity, we may turn to the ass in the lane, and say to him in the 

 sorrow of our hearts, " Poor beast, although thy disproportioned ears 

 may excite our contempt, and thy braying our ridicule, nevertheless, 

 when left to thine own resources, thou hast that within thee which 

 directs thee to thy welfare. Thou hast a means from Providence* 

 ut scias reprobare malum et eligere lonum : an advantage which we 

 also possess from the same divine source, but which, when the kitchen 

 is concerned, we have not fortitude to turn to our profit. The 

 attractions of the shambles, the larder, and the oven, too often make 

 us thy inferiors." Were it not for the wonderful accommodation of 

 nature, we should have a very short time of it here below. But, 

 luckily, she is a good friend to us ; for, although she thinks proper 

 to chastise us with incidental attacks of sickness and disease, she 

 kindly habituates our bodies to surprising extremes of plenitude and 

 poverty. Thus, we read that Claudius Albinus could despatch at one 

 supper 500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 Ib. of grapes, 100 

 ortolans, and 60 oysters. No doubt the glutton's constitution paid 

 handsomely for this. To have borne such a load, the fellow's 

 stomach must have been as strong as Mr Bull's back, saddled with 

 800 millions of debt, and Peel's income-tax to boot, by way of 

 Mackintosh. I would not have slept in the same sty with this hog 

 for the finest bird of Paradise from the woods of New Guinea. As 

 an opposite extreme, I may notice Cornaro of our own times. By 

 never touching butcher's meat, and by extraordinary abstinence, he 

 saved himself, at the age of thirty, from consumption, pronounced 

 mortal by his physician ; and he lived to somewhere above one 

 hundred and five years, ever happy, well, and merry, and was blessed 

 with the full use of all his faculties to the very last. 



