for wheaten-bread 1f. Her diet is haftey-pudding, milk, butter, and potatos."

The labouring classes of the people, he fays, in many parts of the kingdom, live entirely on brown bread.†

Many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very comfortablely, for months together, upon oat-meal, and barley-meal, mix'd with onely water and falt, with no other variety than the different degrees of thickness and thinnefs of bread, pottage, flummery, and gruel. If they can afford, now and then, to convert a peck of malt into beer [ale], they think themselves moft curiously provideëd.‡

Befide the inftanceës allready adduce'd to disprove the necesfity of animal food, from the example of nations and numbers, may be aded fome from that of individuals, lately or ftil liveing.

A writeër who appear'd in The gentlemans magazine, for Auguft 1787, under the fignature of Etonenfis, in giveing a description of Moffat, fays that "the chalybeat spring, perhap the strongest in Britain, was discover'd about 40 years ago;" to which he ads the following

note :

* Ibi, II, 75. + Ibi, 78.

+ Ibi, I, 503.

"This fpring was found out in 1748, by one of the most original geniuses that ever exifted, His name was John Williamson, alias Pythagoras, alias Bramin, alias Hole-John. This laft nick-name proceeded, i believe, from a farm he rented: the two others from his fingular notions. He was wel skil'd in natural philosophy, and might be fay'd to have been a moral philofopher, not in theory onely, but in ftrict and uniform practice. He was remarkablely humane and charitable, and, though poor, was a bold and avow'd enemy to every fpecies of oppresfion. ... Among others, the transmigration of fouls, or metempsychosis of Pythagoras, was fay'd to have been one of his favourite dogmas.* Certain it is, that he accounted the murder (as he [juftly] call'd it) of the meaneft animal, except in self-defence, a very criminal breach of the law of nature, infisting, that the creator of all things had constituteëd man, not the tyrant, but the law

*It was probablely fo fay'd by ignorant people, who can not distinguish justice or humanity from an abfurd and imposfible fystem. The compileër of the present book, like Pythagoras and John Williamfon, abstains from animal food; but he does not, nevertheless, believe in the metempsychofis, and much doubts whether it was the belief of either of those philofophers.

ful and limited fovereign, of the inferior animals,* which, he contended, anfwer'd the ends of their creation better than their little defpotîck lord......... He did not think it

-enough,

In this late age, advent'rous to have touch'd
Light on the precepts of the Samian fage;

for he acted in rigid conformity to them. Dure-
ing the last 40 or 50 years of his life he totally
abstain'd from animal food, and was much of-
fended when any was offer'd to him. He in-
sisted that, at beft, it ferve'd but to cloud the un-
derstanding, to blunt the feelings, and to inflame
every bad pasfion; and that thofe nations who
eat little or no flesh, as the poor among the
Scotch and Irish, were not inferior in fize,
ftrength, or courage to other men.
His vege-
table and milk diet afforded him in particular
very fufficient nourishment; for, when i laft faw
him, he was ftil a tall, robuft, and rather corpu-
lent man, though upward of fourfcore. Though
he allow'd, and even revere'd, the general autho-
rity of the fcriptures, yet he contended that the
text had been vitiateëd in thofe pasfagees which

He feems to have takeën this idea from Genefis I, 28.

were repugnant to his fystem;* and for this he blame'd the priests and prieftcraft, the onely names he use'd for the clergy and their function. .... He live'd a harmless, if not a useful life, and dye'd in 1768 or 1769, age'd upward of 90, perhap not fufficiently regreted, at the feat of a respectable gentleman, who admire'd our philofopher for his humanity, and his independent fpirit, though he laugh'd at his curious notions [which, one may venture to fufpect, he had neither candour to examine, nor sense to comprehend]. Agreeablely to his own defire, he was inter'd in Moffat church-yard, in a deep grave, at a distance from the other burying-placeës. His worthy patron erected a free-ftone obelifk on the fpot, with an epitaph defcriptive of his virtues, and particularly of his protection of the animal creation.

"Bene... placideque quiescas,

Terraque fecura fit fuper osfa levis.”

John Oswald was a native of Edinburgh. At an early age he clope'd from his parents, and

*This is not credible; the bible has evidently been writen by persons, whether priests or laïcks, of a very different way of thinking from our refpectable philofopher, who either could not, or durft not openly, in this inftance, dispel the clouds of prejudice and bigotry with which his infant mind had been carefully envelope'd

enlifted as a private foldier in the 36th regiment. As foon as it was discover'd by his relations, an enfigncy was purchase'd for him in the 42d regiment.

"In that capacity he went to the Eaft-Indies, dureing the war before laft, and there distinguifh'd himself with great gallantry; but, oweing to a difference of opinion with general Macleod, then his commander in chief, he fold out, and, after a peregrination of about two years, among the brachmans of India, the Perfians, &c. he arrive'd in Engleland, so change'd by the manners and dress he asfume'd, as to be unknown to his friends.

"He became a convert fo much to the Hindoo faith, that the ferocity of the young foldier of fortune funk into the mild philofophick manners of the Hindoo brachman. Dureing his stay in Engleland he, uniformly, abstain'd from eating animal food: nay, fo great was his abhorrence of blood, that, rather than pass through a butchers market, he would go any distance about. He brought up his children in the fame way.

"In 1790, being a warm admireër of the French revolution, he went to Paris, and there asfociateëd with the leaders of the Jacobin club. He was, however, a long time there without