burn the dead bodys of their parents, were ftruck with horror at the propofal;-they onely ate them. The Padaeans, another Indian nation, ate raw flesh; and, when any one of the commu→ nity was fick (or rather, it may be, found, plump, and in good plight), his best friends presently dispatch'd him; faying, he was in a wasteing condition, and the diseafe would corrupt his body. If he deny'd he was fick, they had no regard to his words, but kil'd him, and feafted upon his flesh. A woman in the fame circumftanceës was treated in the fame manner, by other women.t The Isfedons, whose country adjoined to Seythia, prefer'd the flesh of a sheep hash'd with that of a parent. The Masfagetae, a Scythian na * Idem, Thalia. The Greek foldiers in the Perfian army fustained not a fhock when the above monarch, to fhow the force of custom, demanded for how much they would devour the dead bodys of their parents, which they were accustom'd to burn. Idem, ibi. Herodotus, Thalia. Herodotus, Melpomene. This ceremony was obferve'd to a late period by the Samojedes, a word fynonymous with Anthropophagi, or man-eaters, and who were probablely of Scythian descent, who use'd to eat the bodys of their dead friends with venifon. See A relation of three embasfies perform'd by the E. of Carlife, p. 83. tion, had a fimilar tafte. The relations of an infirm perfon ufe'd to asfemble, and haveing facrifice'd him, along with an ox, or fome other animal, had all the flesh boil'd together, and fat down to it as to a feast.* This method is admire'd by fome as a hapy thought of at once giveing a man burial, and celebrateing his funeral rites. They did not, however, observe the fame honours toward thofe who dye'd a natural death a distinction which, in fome degree, is preferve'd among pious Christians,-with respect, that is, to the attendant animal. Juvenal fays of the Tentyrites, "An impious crew we have beheld, whose rage Their enemy's very life cou'd not asswage, * Herodotus, Clio. The Brafilians, according to Dellon, " don't even inter their dead friends, but devour them, even fometimes before the breath is out of their bodys. For, if they judge their friends paft all hopes of recovery, they kil them for fear they fhould grow lean before they dye; and, because they would husband their dead friends to the best advantage, they dry their bones, which they beat to powder, and make up in a kind of pap, and so eat it. When the Europeans upbraid them with their crueltys, they return us for anfwer, that we are a company of impious wretches, who fuffer our friends and parents to be confume'd in the earth by the vermin, when we might, with more reason, afford them our belly for their buryingplace." (Voyage to the E. Indies, p. 200.) K Unless they banquet on the wretch they flew, Nor held all forts of pulfe for lawful meat ?* Even, of late days, fays Pliny, to go no further than to the other fide of the Alps, there be those that kil men for facrifice, after the manner of thofe Scythian people, the Cyclops and Lyftrigones, of which he has been speaking, and that, he ads, wants not much of chewing and eating their flesh. This unnatural propenfity was not entirely extinct in that country at a very late period: a woman of the city of Chalons in Cham. pagne ate her own fister; another devour'd her husband; and, a third, haveing murder'd her children, falted their bodys, and ate of them every day as a delicious morfel. * Satyra xv. ; ↑ B. 7, c. 1. Pliny, in his pursuit of these foreign anthropopbagi, forgot that even in Rome (as we are told by Tertullian) Bellonas priests regale'd all their votarys with human blood and that in the Circenfian games, those that had the falling fickness fuck'd the blood of the wounded gladiators: that boars and lions, fatten'd with human flesh, were the daintys on which they fed; and that the entrails of a wild beast that had just devour'd a man were very acceptable. (Apology for the Christians.) ‡ Man a machine, p. 42. After the fiege of Leyden was raife'd, there were certain Hollanders who found a Spaniard, open'd him, caufe'd his heart to be drefs'd, and ate it.* The ancient Britons, like the other Gauls, thought it criminal to take the life of a bare or a goofe, but would facrifice (as we have seen), and even eat,† a man with the utmost composure. They would have fhudder'd with horrour at the profaneness of a philosopher, who should have had the courage to tel them that it was no lefs criminal to kil, for the purpose of food, a man than a goofe pretty much, no doubt, as their more humane and polish'd fuccesfors would do, at prefent, on hearing it feriously maintain'd that they had an equal right by nature to kil both. * Scaligerana, p. 236. + Diodorus Siculus relates, that the Britons who inhabited Iris (now Ireland) devour'd human flesh (B. 5); which is corroborateed by Strabo (B. 4). The Gauls conducted by Brennus into Greece did the fame. (Paufanias, Phocicks.) St. Jerome fays that he himself, when a boy, in Gaul, faw the Scots, a British nation (i. e. in present Ireland), eat human flesh, and that when they found herds of fwine, or other cattle, they use'd to cut off the buttocks of the herdsmen, and breafts of the women, which they esteem'd the onely daintys. (Adverfus Jovinianum, C. 2.) Thefe Irish Scots, transported into the north of Britain, are fay'd to have been anthropophagi even in the reign of William There is a recent inftance of cannibalifın in Engleland. At the Lent asfizeës for Chester, the conqueror, who punish'd them for it, (Monasticon Anglicanum, I, p. 72): nor was the race quite extinct, for fome centurys lateër, as we are inform'd by two of their own historians. Thus Andrew of Wyntown, under the year 1339: "A karle, thai fay'd, wes nere thare by, That wald fet fettys comownaly Chyldyr and women for to fla, And fwanys, that he mycht oure-ta, Qwhil waft but folk wes the cuntre." Thus, alfo, Robert Lindfay of Pitfcottie :-" About this time, under the year 1460, there was apprehended and taken, for a moft abominable and cruel abuse, a brigand, who haunted and dwelt, with his whole family and houshold, out of all mens company, in a place of Angus, called The fiends den. This mifchievous man had an execrable fashion, to take all young men and children, that either he could fteal quietly, or take away by any other moyen, without the knowledge of the people, and bring them home and eat them; and, the more young they were, he held them the more tender, and the greater delicate. For the which damnable abufe he was burnt, with his wife, bairns and family, except a young lafs of one year old, which was fave'd and brought to Dundee, where fhe was foster'd and brought up: but, when fhe came to womans years, the was condemn'd and burnt quick, for the fame crime her father and mother were convicted of. It is fay'd, That, when this young woman was comeing forth to the |