they seized those parts of the countries, most fertile in flesh of
all kinds, obliging the native dogs to retire from their best kennels,
to live under ditches and bushes, but to preserve good neighbourhood and
peace; and finding likewise, that the AEtolian dogs might be of some use
in the low offices of life, they passed a decree, that the natives
should be entitled to the short ribs, tops of back, knuckle-bones, and
guts of all the game, which they were obliged by their masters to run
down. This condition was accepted, and what was a little singular, while
the Molossian dogs kept a good understanding among themselves, living in
peace and luxury, these AEtolian curs were perpetually snarling,
growling, barking and tearing at each other's throats: Nay, sometimes
those of the best quality among them, were seen to quarrel with as much
rancour for a rotten gut, as if it had been a fat haunch of venison. But
what need we wonder at this in dogs, when the same is every day
practised among men?

"Last year I travelled from Dublin to Dundalk, through a country
esteemed the most fruitful part of the kingdom, and so nature intended
it. But no ornaments or improvements of such a scene were visible. No
habitation fit for gentlemen, no farmers' houses, few fields of corn,
and almost a bare face of nature, without new plantations of any kind,
only a few miserable cottages, at three or four miles' distance, and one
Church in the centre between this city and Drogheda. When I arrived at
this last town, the first mortifying sight was the ruins of several
churches, battered down by that usurper, Cromwell, whose fanatic zeal
made more desolation in a few days, than the piety of succeeding
prelates or the wealth of the town have, in more than sixty years,
attempted to repair.

"Perhaps the inhabitants, through a high strain of virtue, have, in
imitation of the Athenians, made a solemn resolution, never to rebuild
those sacred edifices, but rather leave them in ruins, as monuments, to
perpetuate the detestable memory of that hellish instrument of
rebellion, desolation, and murder. For the Athenians, when Mardonius had
ravaged a great part of Greece, took a formal oath at the Isthmus, to
lose their lives rather than their liberty, to stand by their leaders to
the last, to spare the cities of such barbarians as they conquered. And
what crowned all, the conclusion of their oath was, We will never repair
any of the Temples, which they have bur