ep, the world within him and the world
without him indeed bear testimony: but is he the only mourner in this
valley of grief, this travailing creation? No, no; they walk lengthily
in black procession: yet is this present writing not the fit season for
enlarging upon sorrows; we must not now mourn and be desolate as a poor
bird grieving for its pilfered young--is Macduff's lamentable cry for
his lost little ones, "All--what, all?" more piteous?--we must now
indulge in despondent fears, like yonder hard-run stag, with terror in
his eye, and true tears coursing down his melancholy face: we must not
now mourn over cruelty and ingratitude, like that poor old worn-out
horse, crying--positively crying, and looking imploringly for merciful
rest into man's iron face; we must not scream like the wounded hare, nor
beat against our cage like the wild bird prisoned from its freedom.
Moreover, Heraclite, even in thine own day thou mightest well have heard
of the classic wailings of Philomel for Atys, or of consumptive Canens,
that shadow of a voice, for her metamorphosed Pie, and have known that
very crocodiles have tears: pass on, thy desolate definition hath not
served for man.

With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and
learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a
calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but
he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his
nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons,
and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying
rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly
contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling
strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite--what a name of
hungry omen for the imperial devourer!--plausibly insinuates man to be
"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with
domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true,
the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa
glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a
gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care,
all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question,
the kitchen _is_ a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme:
still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily
dinners--man--MAN, I say,