accumulating stores. As Sir Thomas Elyot wrote in the 16th
century (using, you will observe, the very word of Mr Hamerton's
energetic but fed-up tradesman), 'Inconveniences always doe
happen by ingurgitation and excessive feedings.' An old
schoolmaster and a poet--Mr James Rhoades, late of Sherborne--
comments in words which I will quote, being unable to better
them:

This is no less true of the mind than of the body. I do not
know that a well-informed man, as such, is more worthy of
regard than a well-fed one. The brain, indeed, is a nobler
organ than the stomach, but on that very account is the less
to be excused for indulging in repletion. The temptation, I
confess, is greater, because for the brain the banquet stands
ever spread before our eyes, and is, unhappily, as
indestructible as the widow's meal and oil.

Only think what would become of us if the physical food,
by which our bodies subsist, instead of being consumed by
the eater, was passed on intact by every generation to the
next, with the superadded hoards of all the ages, the earth's
productive power meanwhile increasing year by year
beneath the unflagging hand of Science, till, as Comus
says, she

would be quite surcharged with her own weight
And strangled with her waste fertility.

Should we rather not pull down our barns, and build
smaller, and make bonfires of what they would not hold?