OF THE OX. 123 



and sweeping epizootia, inexorable in its lati- 

 tudinarian march, entered those shady bounds, 

 and decimated those orderly sheds with the 

 same impartiality as it did that of the poor 

 man, Cutting, whose whole fortune was stored 

 up in the two milch cows whose death he had 

 to deplore. 



This epizootia threatens to invade, one by 

 one, all the European States, like the awful 

 scourge of 1750, to which we have already 

 drawn attention. For even now Holland and 

 Belgium* have been smitten ; and the alarm 

 it has excited has for a time superseded the 

 panic which the stealthy advance of the 

 cholera to the west had kindled. Some 

 imagine that it might have been kept out of 

 Great Britain, or have been checked in its 

 outbreak. But, in spite of all the safest pre- 

 cautions and the soundest measures of prepa- 

 ration, it would most likely have baffled human 

 skill, and neither been held aloof nor stifled in 

 its focus. But how painful it is, to have to 

 write and to think that ignorance, careless- 

 ness, revolting cupidity, and the most wanton 

 violation of the laws, have all contributed to 

 * See Notes 0, P. 



