ere his
ruling passions. He lived at home, in the style most
agreeable to his disposition, and nothing could induce
him to quit Dunhalow and the fox-hounds."

Phil's journeys as a pig-driver to the leading seaport towns nearest
him, were always particularly profitable. In Ireland, swine are not kept
in sties, as they are among English feeders, but permitted, to go at
liberty through pasture fields, commons, and along roadsides, where they
make up as well as they can for the scanty pittance allowed them at home
during meal-times. We do not, however, impeach Phil's honesty; but simply
content ourselves with saying, that when his journey was accomplished,
he mostly found the original number with which he had set out increased
by three or four, and sometimes by half a dozen. Pigs in general
resemble each other, and it surely was not Phil's fault if a stray one,
feeding on the roadside or common, thought proper to join his drove and
see the world. Phil's object, we presume, was only to take care that his
original number was not diminished, its increase being a matter in which
he felt little concern. He now determined to take a professional trip
to England, and that this might be the more productive, he resolved to
purchase a lot of the animals we have been describing. No time was lost
in this speculation. The pigs were bought up as cheaply as possible, and
Phil sat out, for the first time in his life, to try with what success
he could measure his skill against that of a Yorkshireman. On this
occasion, he brought with him a pet, which he had with considerable
pains trained up for purposes hereafter to be explained.

There was nothing remarkable in the passage, unless that every creature
on board was sea-sick, except the pigs; even to them, however, the
change was a disagreeable one; for to be pent up in the hold of a ship
was a deprivation of liberty, which, fresh as they were from their
native hills, they could not relish. They felt, therefore, as patriots,
a loss of freedom, but not a whit of appetite; for, in truth, of the
latter no possible vicissitude short of death could deprive them.

Phil, however, with an assumed air of simplicity absolutely stupid,
disposed of them to a Yorkshire dealer at about twice the value they
would have brought in Ireland, though as pigs went in England it was low
enough. He declared that they had been fed on tip-top feeding: which was
literally true, as he afterwards admitte