d many olympiads ago, has, in his volume
entitled the _Canon_, defined the line of beauty. It was here in its
perfection: it followed with winning obsequiousness every member, but
delighted more especially to swim along that placid and pliant
curvature on which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication.
Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance from
the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his
whole length, breadth, and height: and they who had never seen him in
earnest, nor separate from the common swine of the enclosure, with
which he was in the habit of husking what was thrown to him, could
form no idea what a prodigious beast he was. Terrible were the
expressions of choler and comminations which burst forth from his
fulminating tusks. Erimanthus would have hidden his puny offspring
before them; and Hercules would have paused at the encounter. Thrice
he called aloud to the high priests: thrice he swore in their own
sacred language that they were a couple of thieves and impostors:
thrice he imprecated the worst maledictions on his own head if they
had not violated the holiest of their vows, and were not ready even to
sell their gods. A tremor ran throughout the whole body of the united
swine; so awful was the adjuration! Even the Gasteres themselves in
some sort shuddered, not perhaps altogether at the solemn tone of its
impiety; for they had much experience in these matters. But among them
was a Gaster who was calmer than the swearer, and more prudent and
conciliating than those he swore against. Hearing this objurgation, he
went blandly up to the sacred porker, and, lifting the flap of his
right ear between forefinger and thumb with all delicacy and
gentleness, thus whispered into it: "You do not in your heart believe
that any of us are such fools as to sell our gods, at least while we
have such a reserve to fall back upon."

'"Are we to be devoured?" cried the noble porker, twitching his ear
indignantly from under the hand of the monitor. "Hush!" said he,
laying it again, most soothingly, rather farther from the tusks:
"hush! sweet friend! Devoured? Oh, certainly not: that is to say, not
_all_: or, if all, not all at once. Indeed the holy men my brethren
may perhaps be contented with taking a little blood from each of you,
entirely for the advantage of your health and activity, and merely to
compose a few slender black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the
tem