Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

Blood-ftain'd, deferves to bleed: but you, ye flocks,
What have ye done; ye peaceful people, what,
To merit death? you, who have given us milk
In luscious ftreams, and lent us your own coat
Against the winters cold? And the plain ox,
That harmless, honeft, guileless animal,
In what has he offended? he, whofe toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest; shall he bleed,
And ftruggling groan beneath the cruel hands
Even of the clown he feeds? and that, perhaps,
To fwell the riot of th' autumnal feast,
Won by his labour? Thus the feeling heart
Would tenderly fuggeft: but 'tis enough,
In this late age, adventurous, to have touch'd
Light on the numbers of the Samian sage."*

Clement of Alexandria fays of faint Matthew, that he abstain'd from the eating of flesh, and that his diet was fruits, roots and herbs."+

Apollonius Tyanaeus, a ftrict adhereënt to the doctrines of Pythagoras, prohibited himself the ufe of animal food.

Porphyry, a philofopher of the Pythagorean school, wrote a book, intitle'd Of abstinence from the eating of animals, four books; ftil extant, and frequently publish'd in Greek and Latin.

The Manicheans, a fect of Christians who

*Spring.. ↑ Paedagogue, B. 2, C. 1.

believe'd in both a good and an evil principle, religiously abstain'd from all kinds of animal food.

In the year 1287, according to the chronicleër of the priory of Lanercost, in Cumberland, was, amongst them, William Grynerig, who did eat neither flesh nor fish: of whom Henry de Burgh, prior, fay'd,

"Vivere fub vefte non queras canonicali

Communi more qui nequis bortor ali.”* "I do advise, you would not feek to live Under the veft canonical, who can't

Be fed, like others, in the common form."

Of the more modern nations of Europe we may obferve that the peasantry of that part of Spain through which mister Swinburne travel'd, feem'd very poor, and frugal in their diet; bread steep'd in oil, he fays, and occafionally season'd with vinegar," is the common food of the country-people from Barcelona to Malaga."† "We sometimes," fays major Jardine, "crofs'd wild and defert hills, inhabited by the fhepherds,

*Chronicon de Lanercoft (Cotton MS. Claudius, D. VII), fo. 195.

+ Travels through Spain (in 1775 and 1776), p. 210.

who had nothing to offer us but gaspacho, or bread and water, season'd with a little pepper and oil."*

The poor in Portugal, according to the authour of Several years travels by a gentleman,† do fare as bad as any people whatsoever. "I believe,” he ads, "many hundreds of familys, dureing the course of their lives, never taste meat."

A Minorquin family often dines on a mefs of oil, water, and bread, ftew'd together. "Brown wheaten bread is the principal nourishment of the poor. The general breakfast is a piece of bread, a bunch of grapes or raifins, and a draught of water."

In France the monks of La Trappe live'd wholely on rice, millet, and vegetables; befides which their fafts were numerous and fevere, and they preferve'd a perpetual filence.

Descartes, at his table, in imitation of the

[ocr errors]

Letters from Barbary, &c. II, 126. Gaspacho," according to Mr. Townsend, "feems to fupply the place of butter milk and whey among the peasants, who, dureing the heat of fummer, live chiefly on a mixture of bread, vin egar, and oil." Journey thro' Spain in 1786 and 1787, II, 240.

London, 1702, 8vo.

Armstrongs History of Minorca, p. 209.

good-nature'd Plutarch, always prefer'd fruits and vegetables to the bleeding flesh of animals.*

The modern Greeks never eat beef; holding it as a maxim, that the animal which tils the ground, which is the fervant of man, and the companion of his noble labours, ought not to be ufe'd for food.t

The common people in fome parts of Rusfia live entirely upon four-crout and groats, and likewise, upon four-bread, raw cucumbers, onions, falt, quafs, and tradakna, a dish confisting of oatmeal dryed in the oven, and mixed up with water: fo that out of thirty thousand peafants belonging to a certain nobleman who live'd on the borders of Muscovy, there were very few who had the opportunity of tasteing either flesh or fish four times in the year.

The Gentoos, of India, at least the Bramin and Banyan cafts, maintain the transmigration of fouls, and, confequently, abstinence from the food of every liveing creature.§ Roger pofitively

* Sewards Anecdotes, II, 171.

+ Mariti, Travels thro' Cyprus, &c. London, 1791, I, 35. Sparrmans Voyage, II, 236.

§ Ovingtons Voyage to Surat, p. 283. See allfo Bernier, III, 145.

The author of a Relation of an unfortunate voyage to Ben

asferts that the Bramins eat nothing that has had life; their food, he fays, is milk, vegetables, and fruit.*

"The Brahmans," as we are told by a more modern writeër, "fhed no blood, and eat no flesh; their diet is rice and other vegetables, prepare'd with a kind of butter call'd ghee, and with ginger and other fpiceës; but they confider milk as the pureëft food, as comeing from the cow, an animal for whose species they have a facred veneration."+ "The Hindoos," in general, according to Stavorinus, "eat no fifh, flesh of animals, or any thing that has receive'd life." The first, in fact, and principal commandment of the religion of Bramah is, not to kil any liveing creature whatever.§ It must not, however, be conceal'd that a gentleman, who

gala, p. 168, fpeaking of the Indian flaves, who eat nothing endueëd with life, ads "their fuperftition is fuch, that how great foever their hunger may be, they choose rather to dye than to eat either flesh or fish."

* Porte ouverte, 1670, C. 18.

+ Sketches chiefly relateing to the Hindoos, 1790, 8vo. p. III. Porphyry and Clement of Alexandria, speaking of the ancient brachmans, fay, they drank no wine, nor ate any animal food.

Voyages to the E. Indies, I, 416. See allfo II, 485. § See Lords Discoverie of the Banian religion, 1630, p. 41.

5

« FöregåendeFortsätt »