Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/55

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HEADLONG HALL.
47

The Reverend Doctor Gaster.

Hem! Mr Mac Laurel! there is a degree of profaneness in that observation, which I should not have looked for in so staunch a supporter of church and state. Milk and honey was the pure food of the antediluvian patriarchs, who knew not the use of the grape, happily for them.—(Tossing off a bumper of Burgundy.)

Mr. Escot.

Happy, indeed! The first inhabitants of the world knew not the use either of wine or animal food; it is therefore by no means incredible that they lived to the age of several centuries, free from war, and commerce, and arbitrary government, and every other species of desolating wickedness. But man was then a very different animal from what he now is: he had not the faculty of speech; he was not encumbered with clothes; he lived in the open