THE HOUSE AND HIS RIDER. 81 



of the Germans, he enjoins that pious missionary to 

 prevent the eating of horseflesh ; and St. Olaf, the 

 cruel king, who converted the Scandinavians to 

 Christianity hy the sword, put to death or mutilated 

 all who persisted in using that heathenish food. 

 Odinism is now extinct, and no man can be tempted 

 by hostility to Christianity to prefer horse-steaks to 

 beef-steaks. Yet is it not very curious to find that 

 neither a total change of religion, nor the lapse of 

 seven centuries have quite extinguished the hereditary 

 taste of the northern nations for such untempting 

 viands ? There has even sprung up in Germany, of 

 late years, a society having for its object to encourage 

 and promote the use of horseflesh for human food ! 

 The horse is the only animal slaughtered tor the 

 supply of the prisoners, in the house of correction in 

 Copenhagen. Mr. Bremner, who courageously tasted 

 both the soup and the bouilli, says, that the latter is 

 " tough, like the worst kinds of beef, but by no means 

 bad to eat, or disagreeable in taste, only dry and 

 thready. Had we not been told, we should have taken 

 it for the flesh of an ox ill fed." 



Is it not wonderful thus to behold systems of 

 cookery surviving systems of religion out of which 

 they arose, and to see empires and kingdoms pass 

 away, while the practices of the kitchen hold their 



