134 



HISTORY OF HEREFORD CATTLE 



cow that subsequently proved to be the winner 

 would be held in England. Whether any of the 

 four-and-twenty rams like the fiddlers of old, 

 'all in a row/ received premiums, 1 am unable 

 to say, though I learn that some of Mr. Soth- 

 am's sheep were beaten by Mr. Cliffs. And to 

 show at what an utterly low ebb the taste of 

 our country is in such respects, I will state that 

 I am credibly informed that those splendid 

 steeds, as well as those pigs, whose loss it is 

 feared England will never be able to repair, 

 were actually laughed at by two-thirds of the 

 ignorant, impudent Yankees present. 



"But enough, of this. It only proves that men 

 in advance of their age are rarely appreciated 

 by it. Galileo found it so; Copernicus found 



A TABLET IN WOOTON CHURCH. 



it so ; Capt. Symes found it so, and Mr. Henry 

 Sotham, if he finds it so, should neither be 

 grieved nor disappointed. It is your empty, 

 swaggering, conceited fellow, who always pro- 

 claim their own 'best,' who are most successful 

 in these degenerate days; for the modest and 

 unassuming there is but little chance. The 

 simple fact that the Committee of the Ameri- 

 can Institute decided against Mr. Sotham's 

 Herefords, proves nothing. That they were 'the 

 best of the lot' at Niblo's, or that 'were ever 

 seen,' we have the most indisputable authority 

 the same which the Marshal Montmorenci 



had, that the Dauphin was a brave man, the 

 Dauphin told him so himself. Will any man 

 deny that this was 



" 'Confirmation strong 

 As proof of holy writ.' 



"But I must say I think it was hardly mag- 

 nanimous of Mr. Sotham, after seducing 

 Messrs. Clay, Hepburn, myself and others into 

 this controversy by honeyed assurances of deal- 

 ing gently and lenient with us, to suddenly, 

 without a word of warning, convert a merely 

 friendly passage of arms into deadly strife. It 

 might have evinced considerable nerve on the 

 part of Fitz James to say to a party of wild 

 Gael, 'Come one, come all.' But Mr. Sotham, 

 when he says he is willing to stand a brush with 

 Messrs. Youatt, Clay, Hepburn, etc., 'individ- 

 ually or collectively/ well knows that he utters 

 a safe challenge. True, Mr. Youatt is conced- 

 edly the first writer in England on cattle, Mr. 

 Clay is a clever man in the Senate, and one of 

 the first breeders of the various kinds of im- 

 proved cattle in the Western States. Mr. Hep- 

 burn certainly writes like an intelligent man 

 but which of these men ever 'purchased five 

 thousand cattle in two months/ or belonged to 

 a concern 'which slaughtered from four to six 

 thousand annually for four years ?' If there be 

 truth in the sage old apothegm that, 'He who 

 kills fat cattle must himself be fat/ does it not 

 follow by a parity of reasoning that he who 

 buys and slaughters cattle must be an adept in 

 the science of breeding them? Cannot your 

 butcher, who wields the knife and cleaver, man- 

 ufacture these implements better than your 

 mere blacksmith who, perhaps, never cut up a 

 beef in his life? We doubt whether this last 

 process was ever performed by Mr. Youatt, un- 

 less in the way of dissection; and as for the 

 Kentucky Senator, confess, 



'An' thou lovest me, Hal,' 



that there's many a man within half a dozen 

 miles of Ashland, who has bought more, killed 

 more, barreled more and ate more beef than 

 thyself, and argal, knows better how to breed it. 

 The fierce old Hepburns, of East Lothian, were 

 drovers and butchers both in a border foray, 

 but we doubt whether their peaceable Pennsyl- 

 vania descendant has ever drove or slaughtered 

 5,000 cattle in his life. If not, what should he 

 presume to know about breeding fine cattle ? 



"By the way, we should like to know what 

 was the 'head and front' of this unfortunate 

 man's 'offending' that he should be selected as 

 the especial victim of Sotham's ire- used up 

 as little of him left as the famous Kilkenny 



