The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎44v] (93/244)

578
THE NINETEENTH
April
vegetarian. The change this would make in all the sights and smells
is far greater than we at first imagine. The ghastly butchers' shops
which meet one at every turn appear to me an incongruity, not to
say more, in this civilised age; they would disappear, as well as the
fishmongers', which are hardly any better. Then there are the sausage
shops, which, especially in southern countries, persecute one with their
pungent odour. How often have I been driven away whilst admir
ing the fapade of an old palazzo or the portico of an ancient church
by the emanations of the terrible pizzicheria half-way down the
street. Another dread sight which meets our eyes abroad, especially
in Grermany and Austria, where much veal is eaten, are the
slaughtered calves paraded about the streets, a dozen or two of them
hanging over the sides of the cart. There can be little doubt, too,
that our kitchens and dining-rooms would be far more sweet and
attractive if no animal food was ever brought into them. The eyes
certainly would be gainers, and our olfactory senses too. In pictures
and in poetry the tables are laid out with luscious fruit and sparkling
wines, whenever charming and pleasant scenes are to be conjured up
before our minds. When coarseness and discomfort are portrayed,
' men brought in whole hogs and quarter-beeves, and all the hall was
dim with steam of flesh.' It is the difference between one of Griulio
Eomano's garden banquets, such as he painted in the vaulted
chambers of the Palazzo del Te, and a peasant orgie by Ostade or
Teniers.
It is not, however, this aspect of the Pythagorean regime which
will make many converts, nor did it ever influence me for very long,
as most doctors lay, or rather laid, about twenty years ago, so much
stress upon the eating of sufficient meat and the anaemic tendency of
this generation that one naturally felt it one's first duty to prefer
health to beauty.
A moie serious consideration, and one which grew upon me
ever}/ year, was the sad and distasteful necessity of killing a living
being in order to live oneself. The great mystery of pain in this
world, which if it once gets a hold upon the mind is so terribly difficult
to shake off, often dimmed my greatest pleasures. But this feeling
too I tried, but less successfully, to subordinate to what I then con
sidered right and reasonable.
The first serious shock I experienced in this theory was when, a
few years ago, one of the most eminent German professors from a great
university dined at our table, and would not touch anything because
he was a vegetarian. I looked over the bill of fare, and realised with
consternation that everything down to the sweet was either meat or fish
or fowl, that vegetables and farinaceous food played the very smallest
part in it, and even they were tainted with sauces not free from re
proach.
I had the evening before listened to an historical discourse delivered