Arsenic is arsenic with certain effects, and
nothing more; and society poisons itself annually to such an amount,
arithmetically expressed.
[Footnote A: _Histoire des Revolutions d'Italie, ou Guelf's et
Gibelins_. Par J. Ferrari. Paris, 1858.]
We ask leave to add two suggestions in favor of the Fijians, both, it
would seem, of philosophic importance. If you do not like the Fijian
national dish,--_national_ in more than one sense,--have the dear
sons of Nature, as Carlyle probably would call them, not the right to
reply,--"We do not like your _sauerkraut_, if you are a German; your
_polenta_, if you are an Italian; your _olla podrida_, if you are a
Spaniard; nor your _grit_, if you are a Dane; your bacon and greasy
greens, if you are a Southerner; nor your baked beans, if you are a
Northerner; nor any other stuff called national dishes,--all of which
are vile, except English roast beef and plum-pudding, and Neapolitan
maccaroni."
The other suggestion is this: Is it likely that Nature has placed the
Fijians exactly in the same meridian with Greenwich, which in some
measure may be called the meridian of civilization, for nothing?--is it
likely that all the solar and cosmic influences which must result from
this fact have really left the Fijian in that state of hyper-brutality
which you think is proved by his _menage_? Is it, we ask, fairly to be
supposed? We think not.
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