76 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



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, has 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 for 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 

 ground ? Special inclinations to certain kinds of food 

 may be constantly traced among different nations. 

 Swine's flesh has been from all times an abomination 

 to the Arabians ; and the aversion of the Jew to 

 pork, wisely confirmed by Divine command, is a 

 striking indication of his Arabian origin. The Ger- 



