Chapter VII: Rome (2)

In nature there is no withholding of mysteries, no avoidance of difficulties, because they may disturb some weak faith, trouble somebody. The great God of the universe lets out his power and displays his wisdom, and builds up to his own level, whether anyone can understand or not. Out of nothing, nothing comes. Out of the infinite comes infinite greatness and wisdom, beyond the scope of man. There is a startling boldness in God’s works. In nature contradictions are piled mountains high, no matter whether man can reconcile them or not. Paradoxes abound without regard to how they will strike men; no explanations are vouchsafed; men are not followed up and told why this is, and why that. They have to take it as it comes. In nature, man is placed in the midst of untold wonders and marvels, without a word, and he is left there to grapple with the highest problems, and think them out. God does not “baby” his children, in these things. This is the highest kind of teaching. Man never finds his littleness, and begins to learn, and climb, till he is put on such a stretch. In this is God’s wisdom, as well as his greatness. Just this is God’s method, also, in the Bible. It is the most bold and fearless of books: mysteries utterly inexplicable it sets before you; difficulties the most irreconcilable it plants on every page, with no attempt at solution. God is master and in command; God governs, and not the skeptics or theologians. Prophecies are uttered, miracles are performed upon God’s plans, as is easy for him. Man may believe, or let it alone. As in nature, God can not be less than himself. There is much in nature and in the Bible that man never can think out, but nature is not the less to man because it is so much above him. The very fact helps to lift him; man needs Alps on Alps above him. If the Bible were more easy, contained fewer hard sayings and knotty doctrines, it would show a less wonderful God, it would be a less powerful stimulant and helper to men. Is not the God of nature and the Bible one God—the work confirming the book? In nature there is loveliness and peace, terror and death; what more calm and delightful than a quiet sunset? What more terrible than tornado and tempest? You have seen the fire of lightning, and heard death riding on the blast in the black darkness. There are peaceful vales of earth filled with the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the gentle lullaby of brooks. But are there not cyclones and whirlwinds, lightnings and thunders, that rend and wreck, and devastate—earthquakes that swallow up whole cities—volcanoes which belch liquid fires? In the midst of beauty and loveliness men starve, and burn, and drown, and rot with loathsome disease, and die.

Now there is no question in the world’s best thought, but that God is good, wonderfully good, notwithstanding all these sufferings and sorrows. Turn to the Bible, what love is there! what goodness and patience! what mercy and grace, for every son of man abundantly bestowed! God is not willing that any should perish. He would rather that all should turn and live. But suffering for sin is there, and punishment for guilt. What forked lightnings play against wickedness! what thunders roll for transgression! There is the worm that never dies, the fire that is never quenched, the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Heaven is there, with all its bliss, for those who love and obey God, and hell is there with all its bale and blight for those who die unforgiven and unreconciled to God. Because of these things, many throw away the Bible and reproach God, and seek after an easier way; but they can not throw away nature, and the same law and method of government inhere in the very core of nature, and are stamped in all its structure. Where this truth is not read out of God’s word, it is still read every day in nature.

In nature there is a majestic order which is gone through, and then nature has no more to give. There is seed time, and a harvest. Both have their place and office, and if they are improved, well, unspeakably well; if disregarded, bad, unspeakably bad. The Bible offers to man a seed time and a harvest. The sowing neglected there is nothing to take its place. This is the only seed time of the soul; swiftly the summer ends, and the harvest is the end of the world. As nature treats man, so does the Bible; without faith and works, the Bible gives nothing; without ploughing and sowing all the pastures of the prairies would fail to give man anything; nature cuts off a sluggard with a straw; without sowing, man reaches the harvest time and brings in no sheaf. Nature deals squarely: without the seed committed to her, there are weeds in the autumn; nothing but leaves. So with the Bible: it demands our confidence, and asks our service; we must heed its call. Nature is so made as to reward man increasingly, as he rises in intelligence and his wants multiply. When wood was gone for fuel, coal came. When the whale oil gave out, petroleum was at hand. After the paddle came the sail, then the steamship. When the mail carrier was too slow, the rail car appeared, followed by the lightning of the telegraph. Nature has her supplies in waiting, and reveals them more and more through the growing needs of the ages. So of the Bible. Many said the Bible would do for the stiff-necked Jews in Palestine, but it would never suit the practical sense of the Romans and the subtle intellectual taste of the Greeks. It did both. Then it was claimed it would not avail for the barbarians of northern Europe. It was adopted by every European nation. Still it was held that the Bible would not reclaim cannibals and the savages of Africa. It has done for all, lifted all of every class which it has touched, and it has power to carry the race higher and wider till the end of time.

An oriental prince brought a tent to his father in a walnut shell, so runs the legend. The king took it out and began to unfold it. It covered the king and his counselors. It covered the royal household. It covered his generals and the army. It covered the kingdom. It covered the whole world. It was Christianity. God was the father, and the prince was Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord. The God of nature and of the Bible is one God.

* * * * *

Resist as much as thou wilt; Heaven’s ways are Heaven’s ways.—_Lessing._

JOHN RICHARD GREEN.

By REV. H. A. HAWEIS, M.A.

Before the publication of Mr. Green’s “Short History,” 86,000 copies of which have been sold in England alone, Mr. Green, although a voluminous essayist in the _Saturday Review_, was absolutely unknown by name to the general public. It is not true, as was asserted in a leading journal, that the success of his book surprised his friends. In 1863, the clergyman whom he followed at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, said to me, “I think we have a giant among us in Johnny Green.” “I made up my mind about that,” I replied, “the very first night I saw and spoke to him.” Mr. Freeman, Prof. Stubbs, Dr. Stanley, and, I may say, Archbishop Tait, all knew of his powers before he became famous at a leap, and I venture to say not one of them was surprised at his success. I think he was more surprised himself.

He was filled with a great love of historical study, but was generally diffident about his own work. “I read it over,” he said to me in the old days, when I was favored with copious extracts; “and I write and re-write, and wonder after all whether it is worth much—whether any one else will read it!”

His own standard was so high, his knowledge so great, and his critical friends, Freeman, Stubbs, Brewer, etc., so accomplished, that he was inclined to be generally very modest about his own rank as an historian, and at times even wavered in his general design.

When I first knew Mr. Green, he was revolving a work which should deal, I believe, with the Plantagenet period, illustrate the story of the Great Charter, and the making of the English political constitution. The first fragment he put into my hand in type was Stephen’s Ride to London.

At the instance of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher, he abandoned the _magnum opus_ for a season, and taking, in one wide sweep, the whole of English history, produced that unique and popular narrative which raised him immediately into the very first rank of historians.

I remember his anxiety to bring the book within the reach of the masses, to make it a cheap book, his battle with the publisher on that ground, and his final victory.

“They will not see,” he said, “that by this horror of
_dead stock_ and constant issue of dear books, which
means small profits and quick returns to them, they
miss the bulk of the middle classes, who are the real
readers—the upper classes and the very poor don’t
read—and you make your new books so dear, that your
middle class, who do, can’t buy. Look at America; you
ought to bring literature to people’s doors. If I were
a publisher, I would have a vast hawking-system, and
send round my travelers with cheap books to every alley
and suburban district within ten miles of London.”

This intense sympathy with the people, no doubt, had to do with those innate democratic and republican tendencies in Mr. Green which so alarmed the _Quarterly Review_, but they were immensely quickened by his many-sided experiences in the East-end of London.

In those Hoxton and Stepney districts, where he was my fellow curate, and my constant friend and companion for two years, he was learning to know the English people. He had read about them in books. In Stepney he rubbed elbows with them. He had a student’s acquaintance with popular movements; but the people are their own best interpreter; and if you want to understand their ways in the past, you can not do better than study our present poor-law guardian, navvy, artisan, East-end weaver, parish Bumble, clerk, publican, and city tradesmen, in the nineteenth-century flesh.

Mr. Green never worked more vigorously at his history than when he was busy reading its turbulent popular movements, and mixed social influences, secular and religious, in the light of mechanics’ institutes, poor-law difficulties, parochial squabbles, and dissenting jealousies. The postponement of his history until the harvest of this precious experience had been fully reaped, gave him that insight into the secret springs of popular enthusiasm, suffering, and achievement which makes his history alive with the heart-beats of our common humanity, instead of mouldy with the smell of moth-eaten MSS. and dead men’s bones.

That slight nervous figure, below the medium height; that tall forehead, with the head prematurely bald; the quick but small eyes, rather close together; the thin mouth, with lips seldom at rest, but often closed tightly as though the teeth were clenched with an odd kind of latent energy beneath them; the slight, almost feminine hands; the little stoop; the quick, alert step; the flashing exuberance of spirits; the sunny smile; the torrent of quick invective, scorn, or badinage, exchanged in a moment for a burst of sympathy or a delightful and prolonged flow of narrative—all this comes back to me, vividly! And what narrative, what anecdote, what glancing wit! What a talker! A man who shrank from society, and yet was so fitted to adorn and instruct every company he approached, from a parochial assembly to a statesman’s reception!

But how enchanting were my walks with him in the Victoria Park, that one outlet of Stepney and Bethnal Green! I never in my life so lost count of time with any one before or since.

Green would live through a period. Two hours on the Venetian Republic, with every conceivable branch of allied history, literature, and politics thrown in, yet willing to listen and gather up at any moment; infinite speculations at other times on theology, philosophy; schemes for the regeneration of mankind; minute plans for the management of our East-end districts; anecdotes of the poor; rarer veins of sentiment and personal criticism.

I have sometimes, after spending the evening with him at my lodgings, walked back to St. Philip’s Parsonage, Stepney, toward midnight, talking; then he has walked back with me in the summer night, talking; and when the dawn broke it has found us belated somewhere in the lonely Mile-end Road, still unexhausted, and still talking.

At such times we have neither of us undressed all night—that was so especially in the cholera times—but I would go back to St. Philip’s and sleep on a sofa till breakfast-time.

In those days we were both feeling our way, through similar experiences, to conclusions of a somewhat different nature; but the memory of many precious hours of soul-communion remains with me, as something sacred and beautiful beyond words. I think at such times we grow in mind and develop in character in days and nights, more than in months and years of slower vitality and lessened intensity.

In 1866 the cholera broke out in the East-end of London. Mr. Green was then Incumbent of St. Philip’s, Stepney, and I had just removed to a curacy at the West-end; but his position at this time was very lonely, and I was glad to go out to be with him whenever I could. I am sorry to say that in the general cholera panic a good many who ought to have remained at their posts forsook them, and this made the work very heavy for people of any means and influence who still felt bound to reside in the affected districts.

Although Mr. Green’s parish did not suffer as heavily as some, yet in some streets the mortality was very great. The dead could hardly be got away quickly enough. The neighbors often refused to touch them. I have known Mr. Green take an active part in sending off the cholera beds for burning, and getting the corpses out of the houses. The only people who seemed willing to help him were the lowest women of the town. These poor girls rallied round the active and public-spirited clergyman; and it was no uncommon thing to see Mr. Green going down the lowest back streets in Stepney, on his way to some infected house, between two women of the town, who had volunteered with him on such sad and perilous service to the dead and dying, as was daily to be done, and was daily being left undone, in those dismal times.—_The Contemporary Review._

A TROPICAL RIVER IN FLORIDA.

By S. J. M. EATON, D.D.

This State reaches down toward the tropics. The twenty-ninth parallel of latitude marks the frost line. Below this is the land of perennial flowers and ever ripening fruits. Even before you reach the favored line there are scenes and surroundings that remind you that the winter is past, that the time of the singing of birds is perpetual, and that nature is most prodigal of her gifts in lands nearest the pathway of the sun. In recalling the history of Ponce de Leon, one can not fail of sympathizing with him in his search for the fountain of perpetual youth. That search was not only characteristic of the age in which he lived, but in sympathy with the secret wants and wishes of all the lands and all the ages. Moreover in such a quest as this, Florida of all places seems fittest and best. It was rightly named at the first “The land of flowers.” They bloom in wondrous fragrance on the orange and lemon trees; they expand in gigantic proportions on the banana tree; they break forth in lavish magnificence on the magnolia. And along the rivers and other water courses strange trees and gorgeous shrubs greet the eye, and tell how prodigal nature is in the display of her resources, and with what wonderful magnificence she can clothe the face of the landscape in regions remote from wintry blasts. Even in central Florida, where frosts sometimes come, there is a wealth of trees and flowers and fruits that transforms the whole country into fairy land almost, as the summer sun with its genial heats kisses it into life, beauty, and fragrance.

The Ocklawaha River is one of the delightful features of central Florida. It is wild and weird and novel in all its aspects. One of its branches is the Silver Spring, that is really an anomaly in nature. This branch of the river has its origin in the celebrated fountain known as the “Silver Spring,” and that as a fountain might, from its beauty and purity and liquid clearness, well be mistaken for the fabled one that was the object of the quest of Ponce de Leon. Whether it was ever visited by this romantic knight or not, it is worthy to be the shrine of many a pilgrim in search of the beautiful and the romantic. This wonderful spring gushes forth from the bosom of the earth in volume sufficient to form at once a small river. The steamboats run up and float in the bosom of the spring, which is large enough to float four or five at once without jostling. The water is clear and sparkling, and although seventy-five feet in depth, yet as you gaze down into its recesses every pebble and shell can be seen as plainly as though in the bottom of a small vase. And as the boat rests upon its bosom noiselessly and quietly, you think of the simile of the swan, “floating double—swan and shadow.” This immense volume of water comes up noiselessly, causing scarcely a ripple upon the face of the spring, and floats away as silently amid the shadows, to join the main body of the Ocklawaha. Whence comes this immense reservoir of water? Where is the hidden source that furnishes its mighty volume? Were it not for its crystal purity and sweetness we might imagine it held mysterious communion with the ocean, and drew its vast supply from the bosom of the great deep. The outflow maintains its purity until it joins the main branch of the river, when its association with it causes it to partake of the same character, becoming somewhat muddy, and bearing the dark shadows of the overhanging trees, and thickly strewn with the leaves of aquatic plants that grow luxuriantly along its margin. From the Silver Spring down into the Ocklawaha, and on to its junction with the St. John’s, the channel is narrow and tortuous, running toward every point of the compass, spreading itself out to great widths in some places, in others confined within its narrow channel, but always surrounded with wild and strange scenery. Although in the general the banks are utterly indefinable, as the water runs back to an indefinite distance, yet there is no appearance of aught that would cause malaria. Every here and there a slight avenue opens through which a skiff or canoe might be pushed far out into the forest. The channel itself is so narrow and tortuous that the steamer threads its way with great difficulty. In many places the branches overreach the stream and seem to bar the further progress of the little craft, and render futile all efforts to proceed. In some of the narrow turns a stout boatman is stationed in the bow with a pole to assist in turning the boat when almost a right angle prevents the ordinary working of the machinery in its navigation.

All along this wonderful stream nature reveals her most luxuriant growth of vegetation. Here is the palm, with its strangely contorted trunk and corrugated bark. By its side is the palmetto with fantastic branches, and wide-spreading leaves. Many of the trees send up their gnarled roots in high arches underneath which the water runs at will. Great trailing masses of vines cling to the trees, and weigh down their branches almost to the water, often reaching from one tree to another, making a dense grove, and shutting out the sunlight from the water beneath. Lower down, and clinging to the banks on either side, are all manner of aquatic plants, beautiful in leaf and luxuriant in flower, gleaming often like bright jewels in the soft sunshine. Lilies of various varieties rest in the water, their bright green leaves surrounding their flowers of waxy white and yellow gold as they recline in their cool bath. By their side are plants with arrow-shaped leaves, with white blooms lined with pistils and stamens yellow as virgin gold, and others with flowers of blue, around which gorgeous little humming birds, reflecting the sunlight, and flashing like living jewels, buzz and coquet with the flowers as they extract their luscious sweets for a moment, and then dart off with a flash and disappear. Animated nature is busy adding variety to the scene, from beauty all the way to the beast. Golden beetles, blue-bottle flies, and gilded butterflies in velvet and spangles, float to and fro; water-bugs with varnished wings dart over the surface of the water. Birds of gorgeous plumage arise in the distance and sail up the stream. The oriole with its magnificent feathers of orange and black; the blue jay with its livery of blue and white, and its sharp cutting note, and the great red flamingo, with awkward, ungainly form, its long spindling legs and small snake-like neck, and plumage of red, like an Egyptian sunset, are seen; the former two darting quickly from tree to tree; the latter standing in the water in some sequestered spot, idly dreaming the time away, and apparently indifferent as to whether the earth turns upon its axis or not. Near the bank a water serpent might be seen urging his way with arrowy motion through the water, defiantly thrusting out his tongue with a malice born in Eden, perhaps, or lying in the warm sun on a fragment of bark, not considering it important to move, yet pushing out the same scornful challenge. At times a magnificent specimen of the alligator is seen in the distance sunning himself on a log, but rolling incontinently into the water at the approach of the boat, or the slightest alarm from any cause. The poor saurian who has arrived at years of discretion, has learned from bitter experience that the human sportsman carrying firearms is not to be trusted, in this age of Spencer rifles. He therefore retires in good order at their approach. But nearer at hand the infant alligator has less fear. He can be seen creeping up the bank, careening upon the waves that are thrown up by the motion of the boat, sporting in the shallow water with youthful indifference to danger, and with great stupid eyes and shockingly open countenance, gazing up at the passing visitors. And so the boat glides and twists and forces its way down the current, the branches on either side sweeping its sides and even its upper decks. The entire scene is one of kaleidoscopic beauty and variety, until the mighty St. John’s is reached, and the craft that has done you such good service is safely moored at the wharf at Palatka.

THE INFLUENCE OF WHOLESOME DRINK.

[Concluded.]

Coffee is the berry of an evergreen tree, which grows to a height of about twenty feet, and which is largely cultivated in Arabia, Ceylon, Jamaica, and the Brazils. The berry is plucked when sufficiently ripe, and carefully stored away. It is principally composed of a sort of hard paste or meal, similar to that of the almond or bean, which is destined by nature to form the earliest nourishment of the young germ contained in the seed. When this meal is exposed to strong heat, it is partly turned into the fragrant flavor, which is familiar to all drinkers of coffee. Hence coffee is always roasted before it is employed in the preparation of beverage. The process is best accomplished by placing the berries in a hollow cylinder of iron, kept turning rapidly round over a clear fire until they put on a light chestnut color, when they require to be cooled quickly by tossing them up into the air. Roasted coffee contains, besides its fragrance, the white nerve food already alluded to in speaking of tea, a remnant of the nutritious meal, unaltered by the roasting, and a slightly astringent matter. Its nature is, therefore, singularly like to that of tea, and its action on the living frame is precisely the same. When drunk in moderation, coffee supports and refreshes the body, and makes the food consumed with it go further than it otherwise would. Coffee is, upon the whole, less astringent than tea; it also contains only half the quantity that tea has, weight for weight, of the active nerve food. Hence it can be taken stronger than tea, and so has more of the other nourishing ingredients in any given bulk. A cup of strong coffee generally holds about the same quantity of the active nerve food as a weak cup of tea.

As with tea, so with coffee; it requires to be prepared differently, accordingly as the object is, to get from it the finest flavor or the greatest amount of nourishment. The most delicious coffee may be made by using a tin vessel, called a percolator, having a false bottom at mid-height, drilled full of fine holes, and a spout coming off from beneath the false bottom. Finely-ground coffee is to be pressed and beaten down firmly upon the false bottom, and then boiling water is to be poured over it through a kind of coarse cullender, so arranged as to break its descent into a boiling shower. The hot water thus gently rained down on the coffee then drains gradually through it, carrying all the finer parts and flavors with it into the vessel beneath, but leaving behind the coarser matters. For the convenience of consumers, coffee is now commonly removed from the roaster at once into a mill driven by steam, and is there ground while still hot. It is then pressed out from the mill directly into tin cases prepared to receive it, these being immediately closed very carefully. By these means the coffee is sent out, ready for use, with all its most excellent qualities clinging about it. Three drachms of ground coffee of this quality are abundantly sufficient to furnish two small cups of a most delicious beverage.

When quantity of nourishment, rather than fineness of flavor, is the thing desired, the ground coffee should be placed in a clean dry pot standing over the fire, and be kept there until thoroughly hot, being stirred constantly, so that it may not burn. About five grains of carbonate of soda should then be added for each ounce of coffee, and boiling water be poured on, the whole being closely covered up and allowed to stand near the fire, without simmering, for some time. When about to be used, it should either be gently poured off into cups, without shaking it, or it should be strained through a linen cloth into another pot. An ounce of coffee employed in this way is sufficient for the preparation of two pints of strong nutritious drink.

A small evergreen tree grows in the West Indies, Mexico, and Peru, which bears a large fruit something like a melon. In this fruit there are a great number of seeds resembling beans. When the fruit is ripe, it is plucked from the tree and split open, and the seeds are picked out and dried in the sun. After these beans have been roasted in an iron cylinder, in the same manner as coffee, they, too, become bitter and fragrant, and are turned into what is known as cocoa. To form cocoa nibs, the husk of the roasted bean is stripped off, and the rest is broken up into coarse fragments. In the preparation of chocolate, the cocoa nibs are ground up and turned into a sort of paste, by admixture with sugar and spices. The unhusked bean is also crushed between heavy rollers, and made into a coarser kind of paste, with starch and sugar, and is then sold in cakes.

Cocoa contains about the same quantity of the nerve-food ingredient as tea, and besides this it also contains a nutritious meal. More than half its weight is, however, made up of a rich oily substance, nearly resembling butter in nature. When cocoa is prepared by stirring the paste up in boiling water, all these several ingredients are present in the drink. It is then as nourishing as the very strongest kind of vegetable food, and scarcely inferior to milk itself. It indeed is richer than milk in one particular; it contains twice as much fuel substance, or butter, and if the nerve-food ingredient be taken into the reckoning, it is scarcely inferior in supporting power. On account of its richness it often disagrees with persons of weak digestion, unless it be prepared in a lighter way, that is, by simply boiling the cocoa nibs in water, and mixing the beverage produced with enough milk to reduce its great excess of oily principle. Cocoa serves at once as an agreeable and refreshing beverage, and as a highly nutritious food for healthy and hard-working people. It has in itself the excellence of milk and tea combined.

The beverages which are also prepared by soaking the seeds of vegetables in hot water, but which are not then drunk until a further change of the nature of partial decay has been produced in them, are of a very unlike character to those which have been hitherto under consideration. Although there are several different kinds of this class, they all stand together under the family name of beer. Now this much must at once be said for these beverages. There is in all of them both flesh-making substance and fuel-substance. The first gives to the liquor its body, and the second confers its sweetness. The barley-corn contains the same kinds of ingredients as the wheat-grain, and by the operation of malting the starch is chiefly turned into sugar. If a gallon of strong ale be boiled over a fire, until all the more watery parts are steamed away, there will be found at the bottom of the vessel rather more than a quarter of a pound of dry remainder. This is flesh-making substance, and sugar, which were originally taken out of the malt. If a gallon of milk were treated in the same way, there would be found nearly a pound of similar dry substance. Strong beer therefore contains about one-third part as much nourishment as an equal quantity of milk. When beer is drunk, its watery parts are at once sucked from the digesting-bag into the supply-pipes, to be poured through the body with the blood; this is how beer quenches the thirst. The thicker portions are pushed on through the sluice-gate of the stomach in a digesting state, and are, in fact, treated in every respect as ordinary food.

Mixed with the thinner parts of beer, which are thus sucked into the supply-pipes, there is, however, an ingredient which is not as unquestionably nourishing as the thicker principles, and which certainly is not as good a thirst-quencher and dissolver as water. Flesh-making substance and fuel-substance, either in the state of starch or sugar, may be kept unchanged any long period of time if thoroughly dry, and shut up from the air. When they are moist and exposed to the air, they directly begin to spoil and decay. In beer, these substances are mixed with a large quantity of water, and are exposed to the air, at least during the brewing. Hence, in beer, both are found in a spoiled and decaying state. In this case, the process of decay is called fermentation, or “puffing up,” because the vapors produced by the decay, froth the sticky liquid in which they are set free. The yeast which rises to the surface of fermenting beer, is decaying and spoiling flesh-making substance. The spoiled fuel-substance (sugar) froths and bubbles away into the air as vapor.

But the fuel-substance (sugar) does not, as it decays, bubble away into vapor all at one leap. It makes a halt for a little while in a half decayed state, and in this half decayed state it has a very spiteful and fiery nature. In that fiery and half-decayed condition it forms what is known as ardent, or burning spirit. Beer always has some, as yet, undecayed and unchanged sugar remaining in it, when it is drunk, but it also always has some half decayed sugar or spirit, and bubbling vapors formed by the progress of decay. It is these ingredients of the beer which give it the fresh and warm qualities for which, as a beverage, it is chiefly esteemed.

The spirituous ingredient of fermented liquors is directly sucked with the water out of the stomach into the supply-pipes of the body, and poured everywhere through them. There is no doubt concerning that fact. Animals have been killed and examined a few minutes after fermented liquor had been placed in their digesting bags, and the ardent spirit has been found in great quantity in their supply-pipes, their hearts, and their nerve-marrows and brains.

But some doubt does yet remain as to what the exact nature of the influence is which the ardent spirit exerts, when it has been introduced into these inner recesses of the living body in small quantity, and as much diluted by admixture with water as it is in most beers. Some persons, whose opinions can not be held to be without weight, believe that diluted spirit is capable of aiding the nourishment of the body—of acting as a sort of food. Others of equal authority are convinced that it can do nothing of the kind.

But however the matter may appear regarding the power of ardent spirit to nourish, no doubt can be entertained of the fact, that it certainly is not a necessary food. There is actually nothing of a material kind in the bodies of human creatures, which is not also present in the frames of the irrational animals. The same kind of structures have to be nourished, and the same kind of bodily powers to be supported in oxen and sheep as in men. But oxen and sheep fatten, and grow strong, and are maintained in health without ever touching so much as a single drop of ardent spirit. There are hundreds of men, too, who preserve their vigor and health up to great ages, without even tasting fermented liquors.

It must also be admitted that there are great numbers of people who use fermented liquors in moderation every day, of whom the same can be said. But it is to be feared that those who are safely moderate in their employment of these treacherous agents, are a really small band compared with those who allow themselves to be continually within the reach of unquestionable danger. In the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, with a population amounting to rather less than thirty millions of individuals, when the numbers were lately reckoned, there were yearly sixty-one millions of gallons of ardent spirit consumed as beer; thirty millions of gallons as spirits; and nearly two millions of gallons as wine.

There is, yet again, another very important point of view from which the habitual moderate use of fermented liquors must be contemplated. A pint of strong beer is in itself no very great thing. Many people swallow it almost at a single draught, and in less than a minute. The trifling act, however, entails one serious consequence when it is performed day by day. A pint of strong beer cannot be bought at a less cost than threepence. Threepence a day, at the end of a year, amounts to £4 11s. 3d. If it be only laid by and made no use of, at the end of sixty years, it amounts, under the same circumstances, to £273. If employed, instead of being laid by, it might be improved at the end of sixty years into a large fortune. Hundreds of men have made thousands of pounds with smaller means.

Money, of course, is of no great value in itself; it is only of value when applied to good service. But herein lies the gist of the matter. Money always can be made good use of. If a young man at the age of eighteen begin to lay by threepence every day, instead of buying a pint of beer with it, and continue to do the same thing for two years, he may purchase with the saving an allowance of £10 a year, to commence at the age of sixty-five years, and to be continued as long as he may thereafter happen to live. If he laid by threepence a day for five years, he could purchase with his savings, at the end of that time, an allowance of ten shillings a week, to commence at the age of sixty-five years. If a young man at eighteen begin to lay by threepence a day, and continue to do the same thing from year to year, he may at once purchase the certainty of being able to leave behind him a little fortune of £300 for his wife or children, or any other relatives who may be dear to and dependent upon him, whenever death puts an end to his earthly labors! Surely no rational and prudent man would ever think even 22,000 pints of profitless beer an equivalent for such a result of his industrious labor. It is by no means too strong an expression to speak of the beer as profitless, for this reason: A gallon of strong beer contains a quarter of a pound of nourishment, bought at the cost of a couple of shillings. Two shillings would purchase more than three pounds of meat and bread! The direct money value of ardent spirits, swallowed every year by the inhabitants of the British isles, exceeds ninety millions of pounds sterling.

Although there may be question and doubt as to the character of the influence this fiery substance exerts, when poured out to the living human frame through the supply pipes, in moderate quantity, and weakened by mixture with a large proportion of water, all question and doubt disappear when its action in greater strength and in larger quantity comes to be considered. An inquiring physician, Dr. Percy, once poured strong ardent spirit into the stomachs of some dogs, to see what would happen to them. The poor animals fell down insensible upon the ground directly, and within a few minutes their breathing had ceased, their hearts had stopped beating, and they were dead. Some of the dogs were opened immediately, and it was then found that their stomachs were quite empty. All the ardent spirit had been sucked out of them in a few short minutes. But where was it gone to? It was gone into the blood, and heart, and brain, and there it was discovered in abundance. It had destroyed life by its deadly power over those delicate inner parts.

Human beings are instantly killed when they swallow large quantities of strong ardent spirit, exactly in the same way as Dr. Percy’s dogs. A few years ago two French soldiers made a bet as to who could drink the largest quantity of brandy. Each of them swallowed seven pints in a few minutes. Both dropped down insensible on the ground; one was dead before he could be picked up, the other died while they were carrying him to the hospital. A man in London soon after this undertook to drink a quart of gin, also for a wager. He won his bet, but never had an opportunity to receive his winnings. He fell down insensible, and was carried to the hospital, and was a dead body when he was taken in.

There can be no doubt, therefore, what strong ardent spirit, in large quantities, does for the living body. It kills in a moment, as by a stroke. It is a virulent poison, as deadly as prussic acid, and more deadly than arsenic. Even when it is not taken in sufficient abundance to destroy in the most sudden way, it often leads to a slower death. Striking illustrations of this truth are presented continually in every corner of even this civilized land. It has been fully ascertained that not less than one thousand persons die from the direct influence of ardent spirit, in the British isles, every year.

When people do not die directly upon swallowing large quantities of ardent spirit, it is because they take it so gradually that nature has the opportunity of washing the greater portion of it away through the waste-pipes, before any sufficient amount of it has gathered in delicate internal parts for the actual destruction of life. Nature has such a thorough dislike to ardent spirit in the interior of living bodies, that the instant it is introduced into their supply-pipes and chambers, she goes hard to work to drive out the unwelcome intruder. When men have been drinking much fermented liquor, the fumes of ardent spirit are kept pouring out through the waste-pipes that issue by the mouth, the skin, and the kidneys; the fumes can commonly be smelt under such circumstances in the breath.

When fermented liquors are drunk in a gradual way, but yet in such quantity that the ardent spirit collects more rapidly in the blood than it can be got rid of through the waste-pipes, the fiery liquid produces step by step a series of remarkable effects, growing continually more and more grave.

In order that all the actions of the living human body may be properly carried on, three nerve overseers have been appointed to dwell constantly in the frame and look after different departments of its business. One of these has its residence in the brain; that nerve-overseer has charge of the reason, and all that belongs to it. Another resides under the brain, just at the back of the face; that nerve-overseer looks after all that relates to feeling or sense. The third lives in the nerve-marrow of the backbone; that has to see that the breathing and the pumping of the heart go on steadily and constantly. Of these three superintendents the brain-overseer and the sense-overseer are allowed certain hours of repose at night; they are both permitted to take their naps at proper times, because the reason and the sense can alike be dispensed with for short intervals when the creature is put safely to bed, or otherwise out of harm’s way. Not so, however, with the breathing and blood-pumping overseer. The breathing and the blood-movement require to be kept going constantly; they must never cease, even for a short interval, or the creature would die. Hence the nerve-marrow overseer is a watchman as well as an overseer. No sleep is allowed him. He must not even nap at his post. If he do, his neglect and delinquency are immediately discovered by a dreadful consequence. The breathing and blood-flowing, which are his charge, stop, and the living being, served by the breathing and the blood-streams, chokes and faints.

These three nerve-overseers have been fitted to perform their momentous tasks in the entire absence of ardent spirit, and they are so constituted that they cannot perform those tasks when ardent spirit is present in any great amount. Ardent spirit puts them all to sleep. The reason-overseer is overcome the most easily; he is the most given to napping by nature, so he goes to sleep first. If more spirit be then introduced into the blood, the sense-overseer begins to doze also. And if yet more be introduced, the nerve-marrow watchman ceases to be a watchman, and at length sleeps heavily with his companions.

Now, suppose that you, my attentive reader, were in an unlucky moment of weakness to turn aside from your usual course of temperance and sobriety, and to drink fermented liquor until its fiery spirit gathered in your brain, and put your reason-overseer to sleep, what think you would be the consequence? This would be the consequence—you would for the time cease to be a reasonable being. You would probably still walk about the streets, and go hither and thither, and do all sorts of things. But all this you would accomplish, not with a proper and rational knowledge of your actions. Your reason and understanding being fast asleep while you were walking about, you would properly be living in a sort of brutal existence, instead of a human and reasonable one. You would have laid aside the guide who was intended to be your director in your responsible human life, and you would be rashly trusting yourself in a crowd of the most fearful dangers, all your responsibility still upon your shoulders, without the inestimable advantage of the advice and assistance of this experienced director. Like the brutes, you would then find yourself to be easily roused to the fiercest anger, and set upon the worst courses of mischief; you would find yourself readily filled with the most uncontrollable feelings of passion and violence, and liable to be run away with by them at any moment, and caused to do things that a rational creature could not contemplate without the deepest anguish and shame.

There is no lack of proof that human beings do the most brutish things when their reasons and understandings are put to sleep by strong drink, while their sense-overseers and their animal powers still remain active. Every place and every day afford such in wretched abundance. One impressive instance, however, may perhaps be related with advantage. On the night of the 28th of June, 1856, two drunken men, whose names were James and Andrew Bracken, rushed brawling out from a beer shop in one of the suburbs of Manchester. They ran against two inoffensive passengers, and in their blind and brutish rage began beating them; one was knocked down and kicked about the head when on the ground. He was picked up thence a few minutes afterward and carried to the hospital, where it was found his skull had been broken. The poor fellow died in the course of the night.

In the next assize court, at Liverpool, James and Andrew Bracken stood in the dock to be tried for their brutal act. The counsel who defended them said that it was only a drunken row, and there was no murder in the case, because neither of them knew what he was doing. The judge and the jury, on the other hand, decided that this was no excuse, because they _ought_ to have known what they were doing. They had laid aside their reason and become brutal by their own voluntary act, and were therefore responsible for any deed they might perform while in the brutal state. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against Andrew Bracken, and the judge passed sentence of death upon him, coupling the sentence with these words: “You did an act, the ordinary consequences of which must have been to kill. It was a cruel and a brutal act, and you did it, wholly reckless of consequences. You have therefore very properly been convicted of wilful murder.” The wretched man was removed from the dock shrieking for mercy, with upraised hands, and exclaiming in heartrending tones, “Oh! mother, mother, that I should be hanged!” No doubt he was very much surprised to find himself a condemned convict and a murderer, and had never intended to be so. He had no spite against his victim, and had probably never even exchanged a word with him. No drunkard, therefore, when about to put his reason to sleep by intoxicating liquor, should ever overlook the fact that he will for the time cease to have control over his actions, and that when that reason awakes, he may find himself like Andrew Bracken, a prisoner and a murderer. Whether he do so or not will depend on no will or determination of his own, but upon the mere series of accidents that will surround him while in his self-inflicted, helpless, and brutal state.

The case of Andrew Bracken, sad and striking as it is, by no means stands alone in the annals of crime. At the assize, held at Lancaster in March, 1854, it was shown that in that single court 380 cases of grave crime had been detected and punished within a very short period, and that of the 380 cases 250, including nine murders, were to be directly traced to the influence of drunkenness.

But if having ceased to be sober, my strong-bodied reader, you did not happen to commit murder, or do any other act of gross violence while in the brutal stage of drunkenness, yet nevertheless went on swallowing more and more of the intoxicating liquid until your sense-overseer was put to sleep as well as your reason-overseer, what do you think would chance to you then? Why, you would have ceased to be dangerous to your neighbors, and have become in a like degree dangerous to yourself. You would no longer have power to commit murder, or to do any other act of cruelty, because you would sink down on the ground a senseless and motionless lump of flesh. You would be what the world calls dead-drunk. But you would not in reality be dead, because the nerve-marrow watchman still continued at his post, and awake. The lump of prostrate flesh would still breathe heavily, and blood would be made to stream sluggishly from its beating heart. In this insensible stage of drunkenness, however, you would have ceased to be able to exercise any care over yourself. In it the drunkard is sunk as much lower than brutal life as the brutes are beneath reasoning life, inasmuch as he ceases to be able to exert the power which all brutes possess of perceiving the threatening danger, and turning aside from its approach.

But yet again, rational reader, let us suppose that when you became for the time a lump of insensible flesh, you had already swallowed so much stupefying spirit, that there was enough to put the nerve-marrow watchman to sleep, as well as the reason- and sense-overseers, before any fair quantity could be cleared away out of the waste-pipes of the body. Under such circumstances breathing would cease, and all heart-beating would stop. You would then be dead-drunk in the full sense of the fearful term. Senseless drunkenness is dangerous to the drunkard himself, not only because he could not get out of the way if danger were to come where he is lying, but also because he of necessity is placed in an insensible state upon the brink of a precipice, from the depth beneath which there could be no return if he once rolled over. Whether he will ever again awaken from his insensibility, or whether his earthly frame shall have already commenced its endless sleep, is a question which will be determined by the accident of a drop or two more, or a drop or two less, of the stupefying spirit having been mixed in with the coursing life-streams. The man who kills a fellow-creature in a fit of drunken violence, commits an act of murder; the man who dies in a fit of drunken insensibility, is guilty of self-slaughter. In its first degree, drunkenness is brutality; in its second degree, it is senseless stupidity, of a lower kind than brutes ever know; in its third degree, it is suicidal death. It will be felt that it is important this matter should be looked fairly in the face, when the statement is made that there are not less than seventy thousand confirmed drunkards known to be living at the present time in England and Wales.

It is now a well-proved and unquestionable fact, that a young man of fair strength and health, who takes to hard drinking at the age of twenty, can only look forward to fifteen years more of life; while a temperate young man, of the same age, may reasonably expect forty-five years more! The habitual drunkard must therefore understand that, amongst other things, he has to pay the heavy penalty of thirty of the best years of existence, for the very questionable indulgence that he buys. The doctor also has a sad account to give of aches, and pains, and fevers, and weakness that have to be borne by the intemperate during the few years’ life they can claim. Whatever may be the true state of the case with the moderate use of fermented liquors, their intemperate use is a fertile source whence men draw disease and suffering. Intemperance is another of the influences whereby men cause sickness and decay to take the place of health and strength. The doctor has likewise, it must be remarked, a tale of his own to tell concerning the beneficial power of fermented liquors, when employed as medicines in certain weakened and already diseased states of the body.