the moral character, but to be uniformly so.” We can allow ourselves space only for one or two further quotations from this excellent writer. The remarks upon the common usage of language, by which it is vainly thought to conceal the true nature of the dishes served up upon the tables of the rich, are particularly noteworthy, because the inaccurate expression condemned is almost universal, and that even, from force of habit, amongst reformed dietists themselves:-- “There is a natural horror at the shedding of blood, and some have an aversion to the practice of devouring the carcase of an innocent sufferer, which bad habits improper education, and silly prejudices have not overcome. This is proved by their affected and absurd refinement of calling the dead bodies of animals _meat_. If the meaning of words is to be regarded, this is a gross mistake; for the word _meat_ is a universal term, applying equally to all nutritive and palatable substances. If it be intended to express that all other kinds of food are comparatively not meat, the intention is ridiculous. The truth is that the proper expression, _flesh_, conveys ideas of murder and death. Neither can it easily be forgotten that, in grinding the body of a fellow animal, substances which constitute _human_ bodies are masticated. This reflection comes somewhat home, and is recurred to by eaters of flesh in spite of themselves, but recurred to _unwillingly_. They attempt, therefore, to pervert language in order to render it agreeable to the ear, as they disguise animal flesh by cookery in order to render it pleasing to the taste.” His reflections upon the essential injustice (to use no stronger term) of delegating the work of butchering to a particular class of men (to which frequent reference has already been made in these pages) are equally admirable:-- “Among butchers, and those who qualify the different parts of an animal into food, it would be easy to select persons much further removed from those virtues which should result from reason, consciousness, sympathy, and animal sensations, than any savages on the face of the earth! In order to avoid all the generous and spontaneous sympathies of compassion, the office of shedding blood is committed to the hands of a set of men who have been educated in inhumanity, and whose sensibility has been blunted and destroyed by early habits of barbarity. Thus men _increase_ misery in order to avoid the sight of it, and because they cannot endure being obviously cruel themselves, or commit actions which strike painfully on their senses, they commission those to commit them who are formed to delight in cruelty, and to whom misery, torture, and shedding of blood is an amusement! They appear not once to reflect that _whatever we do by another we do ourselves_.”