 mended,
even at the hazard of their lives. Perhaps, you will hardly believe they can be
so mad as to boil their greens with brass half-pence, in order to improve their
colour; and yet nothing is more true - Indeed, without this improvement in the
colour, they have no personal merit. They are produced in an artificial soil,
and taste of nothing but the dunghills, from whence they spring. My cabbage,
cauliflower, and 'sparagus in the country, are as much superior in flavour to
those that are sold in Covent-garden, as my heath-mutton is to that of St.
James's market; which, in fact, is neither lamb nor mutton, but something
betwixt the two, gorged in the rank fens of Lincoln and Essex, pale, coarse, and
frowzy - As for the pork, it is an abominable carnivorous animal, fed with
horse-flesh and distillers' grains; and the poultry is all rotten, in
consequence of a fever, occasioned by the infamous practice of sewing up the
gut, that they may be the sooner fattened in coops, in consequence of this cruel
retention.
    Of the fish, I need say nothing in this hot weather, but that it comes
sixty, seventy, fourscore, and a hundred miles by land-carriage; a circumstance
sufficient, without any comment, to turn a Dutchman's stomach, even if his nose
was not saluted in every alley with the sweet flavour of fresh mackarel, selling
by retail - This is not the season for oysters; nevertheless, it may not be
amiss to mention, that the right Colchester are kept in slime-pits, occasionally
overflowed by the sea; and that the green colour, so much admired by the
voluptuaries of this metropolis, is occasioned by the vitriolic scum, which
rises on the surface of the stagnant and stinking water - Our rabbits are bred
and fed in the poulterer's cellar, where they have neither air nor exercise,
consequently they must be firm in flesh, and delicious in flavour; and there is
no game to be had for love or money.
    It must be owned, that Covent-garden affords some good fruit; which,
however, is always engrossed by a few individuals of overgrown fortune, at an
exorbitant price; so that little else than the refuse of the market falls to the
share of the community; and that is distributed by such filthy hands, as I
cannot look at without loathing. It was but yesterday that I saw a dirty
barrow-bunter in the street, cleaning her dusty fruit with
