Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/364

 Chap.X. OF MA NO HESTER. 333 CHAP. X. IN the whole circle of intellectual entertainments, few parti- culars cany fo agreeable, an appearance to the curious mind as the hiftory of human manners. And that lower fpecies of pa* triotHm which fhoots up inftin&ively ia every breaft makes k particularly pkafiag to view our own national manners genuine as they rife ia the pages of our national records, and to fee faithfully reprefented in the mirror of hiftory thofe accidental combinations of ideas or thofe rational modes of opinion which prevailed ia the more di Aanft ages of wr fathers. Nor is this fatis&ftieit confined merely to their fublimer exertions of the on- derftanding, their theories of political feience or their principles •f literary tafte* It is even better felt on the furvey of their lit- tle fafhions and fancies in the more characterizing feenes of lower life, in the faithful exhibition of their private manners, and ia the authentic detail of their domestic oeconomy. The provifion for the table among the primitive Britons was taken chiefly from their herds of kine> their flocks of Iheep, their deer,, and their hogs Their droves of the laft muft have undoubtedly furnifhed them* as their brethren the Gauls and the Spaniards were actually furnifhed V with & great variety pf diflies*. The Gauls produced the ktrgeft and the bed hog-meat that was brought into Italy s. And the northerly Gauls in par* ticular fupplied the whole compafs of Rome and the greateft part of Italy in the days of Auguftu^ with gammons, hogs-pud* dings, faufages, and hams** And to thefe the Britons mult have added fome others of the ifland beafts and feveral of the ifland