2 HIPPOPHAGY. 



ceited modems are to this day. But the varied learn- 

 ing, the literary skill, the benevolent enthusiasm, the 

 noble contempt for that peculiar cachination for which 

 the equine race gets credit, although only from man do 

 we hear what he chooses to call a horse-laugh, these 

 are displayed by our learned Professor with a profusion 

 by which we have been most agreeably surprised. We 

 took up his book with no great expectation of being 

 either gratified with a literary treat, or converted to the 

 faith of the, as yet, small and derided sect of the Hip- 

 pophagi. And yet here are we seriously about to tell 

 the public that M. Saint-Hilaire's Letters are most in- 

 teresting, and that to laugh at the idea of eating horse- 

 flesh is great folly in these our days, when so many are 

 so unable to answer the daily-recurring question, "What 

 shall we eat?" and when so many must receive from 

 charity their daily bread. 



Wise and intellectual folk may turn away in affected 

 indifference to flesh - pots and creature - comforts. As 

 for ourselves, we are not ashamed to confess that, in 

 Count Kumford's Essays, we have read with great de- 

 lectation a most appetite-raising chapter, entitled "Of 

 the Pleasure of Eating, and of the Means that may be 

 employed for increasing it." Moreover, knowing how 

 intimately interblended are the moral and the mental 

 with the physical elements of our wondrous being, we 

 subscribe, with a moderate allowance due to the mot 

 of a wit, to the aphorism of a contemporary French- 

 man : " Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what 

 you are."* Mem sana in corpore sano being the per- 

 fectibility of human nature in this life, a treatise on 

 the best mode of keeping soul and body together on 

 alimentary substances, in short is deserving of the 

 most careful study, because involving principles for 

 the evolution and application of which there is re- 

 quired the highest philosophy. Starve a man, or 

 maintain him by a minimum expenditure of nutrition, 

 * " Que je sache ce que tu manges, et je saurai qui tu es. " 



