  JOHN EVELYN, the representative of the more estimable part of the higher middle life of his time, who has so eloquently set forth the praises of the vegetable diet, also claims with Ray the honour of having first excited, amongst the opulent classes of his countrymen, a rational taste for botanical knowledge. Especially meritorious and truly patriotic was his appeal to the owners of land, by growing trees to provide the country with useful as well as ornamental timber for the benefit of posterity. He was one of the first to treat gardening and planting in a scientific manner; and his own cultivation of exotic and other valuable plants was a most useful example too tardily followed by ignorant or selfish land The family of Evelyn was settled at Wooton, in Surrey. During the struggle between the Parliament and the Court he went abroad, and travelled for some years in France and in Italy, where he seems to have employed his leisure in a more refined and useful way than is the wont of most of his travelling countrymen. He returned home in 1651. At the foundation of the Royal Society, some ten years later, Evelyn became one of its earliest Fellows. His first work was published in 1664, Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber. Its immediate cause was the application of the Naval Commissioners to the Royal Society for advice in view of the growing scarcity of timber, especially of oak, in England. A large quantity of the more valuable wood now existing is the practical outcome of his timely publication. In 1675, appeared his Terra: a Discourse of the Earth Relating to the Culture and the Improvement of it, to Vegetation and the Propagation of Plants. The book by which he is most popularly known is his Diary and Correspondence, one of the most interesting productions of the kind. Besides its value as giving an insight into the manner of life in the fashionable society of the greater part of the seventeenth century, it is of importance as an independent chronicle of the public events of the day. The work which has the most interest and value for us is his Acetaria (Salads, or Herbs eaten with vinegar), in which the author professes his faith in the truth and excellence of the Vegetarian diet. Unfortunately, according to the usual perversity of literary enterprise, it is one of those few books which, representing some profounder truth, are nevertheless the most neglected by those who undertake to supply the mental and moral needs of the reading public. Evelyn held many high posts under the varying Governments of the day; and being, by tradition and connexion, attached to the monarchical party, he attracted (contrary to the general experience) the grateful recognition of the restored dynasty. Having adduced other arguments for abstinence from flesh, Evelyn continues:— “And now, after all we have advanced in favour of the herbaceous diet, there still emerges another inquiry, viz., whether the use of crude herbs and plants is so wholesome as is alleged? What opinion the prince of physicians had of them we shall see hereafter; as also what the sacred records of olden times seem to infer, before there were any flesh-shambles in the world; together with the reports of such as are often conversant among many nations and people, who, to this day, living on herbs and roots, arrive to an incredible age in constant health and vigour, which, whether attributable to the air and climate, custom, constitution, &c., should be inquired into.” Cardan—the pseudo-savant of the sixteenth century—had written, it seems, in favour of flesh-meat. Evelyn informs us that:— “This, [the alleged superiority of flesh] his learned antagonist, utterly denies. Whole nations—flesh devourers, such as the farthest northern—become heavy, dull, inactive, and much more stupid than the southern; and such as feed more on plants are more acute, subtle, and of deeper penetration. Witness the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, &c. And he further argues from the short lives of most carnivorous animals, compared with grass feeders, and the ruminating kind, as the Hart, Camel, and the longÆvus Elephant, and other feeders on roots and vegetables. “As soon as old Parr came to change his simple homely diet to that of the Court and Arundel House, he quickly sank and drooped away; for, as we have shewn, the stomach easily concocts plain and familiar food, but finds it a hard and difficult task to vanquish and overcome meats of different substances. Whence we so often see temperate and abstemious persons of a collegiate diet [of a distant age, we must suppose] very healthy; husbandmen and laborious people more robust and longer-lived than others of an uncertain, extravagant habit.” He appeals to the biblical reverence of his readers, and tells them:— “Certain it is, Almighty God ordaining herbs and fruit for the food of man, speaks not a word concerning flesh for two thousand years; and when after, by the Mosaic constitution, there were distinctions and prohibitions about the legal uncleanness of animals, plants of what kind soever were left free and indifferent for everyone to choose what best he liked. And what if it was held indecent and unbecoming the excellency of man’s nature, before sin entered and grew enormously wicked, that any creature should be put to death and pain for him who had such infinite store of the most delicious and nourishing fruit to delight, and the tree of life to sustain him? Doubtless there was no need of it. Infants sought the mother’s nipples as soon as born, and when grown and able to feed themselves, ran naturally to fruit, and still will choose to eat it rather than flesh, and certainly might so persist to do, did not Custom prevail even against the very dictates of Nature. “And now to recapitulate what other prerogatives the hortulan provision has been celebrated for besides its antiquity, and the health and longevity of the antediluvians—viz., that temperance, frugality, leisure, ease, and innumerable other virtues and advantages which accompany it, are no less attributable to it. Let us hear our excellent botanist, Mr. Ray.” He then quotes the profession of faith of the father of English botany and zoology; and goes on eloquently to expatiate on the varied pleasures of a non-flesh and fruit diet:— “To this might we add that transporting consideration, becoming both our veneration and admiration, of the infinitely wise and glorious Author of Nature, who has given to plants such astonishing properties; such fiery heat in some to warm and cherish; such coolness in others to temper and refresh; such pinguid juice to nourish and feed the body; such quickening acids to compel the appetite, and grateful vehicles to court the obedience of the palate; such vigour to renew and support our natural strength; such ravishing flavours and perfumes to recreate and delight us; in short, such spirituous and active force to animate and revive every part and faculty to all kinds of human and, I had almost said, heavenly capacity. “What shall we add more? Our gardens present us with them all: and, while the Shambles are covered with gore and stench, our Salads escape the insults of the summer-fly, purify and warm the blood against winter rage. Nor wants there variety in more abundance than any of the former ages could show.” Evelyn produces an imposing array of the “Old Fathers”:— “In short, so very many, especially of the Christian profession, advocate it [the bloodless food] that some even of the ancient fathers themselves have thought that the permission of eating flesh to Noah and his sons was granted them no otherwise than repudiation of wives was to the Jews—namely—for the hardness of their hearts and to satisfy a murmuring generation.” He is “persuaded that more blood has been shed between Christians” through addiction to the sanguinary food than by any other cause:— “Not that I impute it only to our eating blood; but I sometimes wonder how it happened that so strict, so solemn, and famous a sanction—not upon a ceremonial account, but (as some affirm) a moral and perpetual one, for which also there seem to be fairer proofs than for most other controversies agitated amongst Christians—should be so generally forgotten, and give place to so many other impertinent disputes and cavils about superstitious fopperies which frequently end in blood and cutting of throats.” IT is opportune here to refer to the sentiments of Evelyn’s contemporary and political and ecclesiastical opposite—the great Puritan poet and patriot—one of the very greatest names in all literature. Milton’s feeling, so far as he had occasion to express it, is quite in unison with the principles of dietetic reform, and in sympathy with aspirations after the more spiritual life. In one of his earliest writings, on the eve of the production of one of the finest poems of its kind in the English language—the Ode to Chris “Simply let those, like him of Samos, live: Let herbs to them a bloodless banquet give. In beechen goblets let their beverage shine, Cool from the crystal spring their sober wine! Their youth should pass in innocence secure From stain licentious, and in manners pure. * * * * * * * For these are sacred bards and, from above, Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove.” To readers of his master-piece the Paradise Lost, it is perhaps a work of supererogation to point out the charming passages in which he sympathetically describes the food of the Age of Innocence:— “Savoury fruits, of taste to please True appetites.” In Raphael’s discourse with his terrestrial entertainers, the ethereal messenger utters a prophecy (as we may take it) of the future general adoption by our race of “fruit, man’s nourishment,” and we may interpret his intimation:— “time may come when men With angels may participate, and find No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare. And from those corporal nutriments perhaps Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend Ethereal as we; or may, at choice, Here, or in heavenly paradises, dwell,” as a picture of the true earthly paradise to be—“the Paradise of Peace.” With these exquisite pictures of the life of bloodless feasts and ambrosial food we may compare the fearful picture of the Court of Death, displayed in prospective vision before the terror-stricken gaze of the traditional progenitor of our species, where, amongst the occupants, the largest number are the victims of “intemperance in meats and drinks, which on the earth shall bring diseases dire.” In this universal lazar-house might be seen— “all maladies Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture, Qualms Of heart-sick agony, all Feverous kinds, Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs, Intestine Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs, Demoniac Phrensy, moping Melancholy, And moon-struck Madness, pining Atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting Pestilence, Dropsies and Asthmas, and joint-racking Rheums.” Very different, in other respects, from those of the author of the History of the Reformation in England the sentiments of his celebrated contemporary Bossuet, whose eloquence gained for him the distinguishing title of the “Eagle of MÉaux,” as to the degrading character of the prevalent human nourishment in the Western world, are sufficiently remarkable to deserve some notice. The Oraisons FunÊbres and, particularly, his Discours sur L’Histoire Universelle have entitled him to a high rank in French literature. But a single passage in the last work, we shall readily admit, does more credit to his heart than his most eloquent efforts in oratory or literature do to his intellect. That, in common with other theologians, Catholic and Protestant, he has thought it necessary to assume the intervention of the Deity to sanction the sustenance of human life by the destruction of other innocent life, does not affect the weight of intrinsic evidence derivable from the natural feeling as to the debasing influence of the Slaughter-House. It is thus that he, impliedly at least, condemns the barbarous practice:— “Before the time of the Deluge the nourishment which without violence men derived from the fruits which fell from the trees of themselves, and from the herbs which also ripened with equal ease, was, without doubt, some relic of the first innocence and of the gentleness (douceur) for which we were formed. Now to get food we have to shed blood in spite of the horror which it naturally inspires in us; and all the refinements of which we avail ourselves, in covering our tables, hardly suffice to disguise for us the bloody corpses which we have to devour to support life. But this is but the least part of our misery. Life, already shortened, is still further abridged by the savage violences which are introduced into the life of the human species. Man, whom in the first ages we have seen spare the life of other animals, is accustomed henceforward to spare the life not even of his fellow-men. It is in vain that God forbade, immediately after the Deluge, the shedding of human blood; in vain, in order to save some vestiges of the first mildness of our nature, while permitting the feeding on flesh did he prohibit consumption of the blood. Human murders multiplied beyond all calculation.” Bossuet, a few pages later, arrives at the necessary and natural consequence of the murder of other animals, when he records that “the brutalised human race could no longer rise to the true contemplation of intellectual things.” |
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