expect the approbation of our own conscience, and when in the evening of our days we sit down to the pleasures of social life, with a rosy regiment of carbuncles glistening in their ruby uniforms on our nose, such excrescence will tell a blushing tale of our moral and patriotic deglutitions. Besides, let it never be forgotten that the pleasing idea of youth is connected with a carbuncled proboscis; for as buds designate the spring of the year, so by a corresponding analogy, a snout which flourishes with perpetual blossoms is equally typical of the spring of life: "Happy is the man that hath his nose full of them."

The art of drinking is furthermore imperative, inasmuch as it promotes the moral healthfulness of society. Without it, we are slaves to ennui; with it, superior intelligences. It is the mental prompter, that, standing behind our good qualities, spurs them to immediate action. The fumes, the vapory influences, and all the thousand charms contained within the circumference of a bottle, may be traced to this cause. The fact is, that the generous fluid infused into our blood, drives it in quick circulation to the heart, where meeting with a host of virtues slumbering like porters at the India-house for want of employ, it rouses them from inactivity, sends them galloping through every fibre of the

frame, and away they post, one and all to knock for admittance at the chambers of the intellect. The poor brain, stupified with the clamor and confusion, is thus put to a complete stand-still, which will account for the partial cessation of mind during the praise-worthy periods of inebriety.

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The habitual drunkard is the most entertaining member of society. His face is an unvaried index of good-humour; for, immersed in pleasing trances, he has no time left to be wicked. His blood, like his wine-merchant's bill, rich with continued inflammations, courses nimbly through his veins. His paunch, fraught with the contents of a cellar, seems proudly conscious of its corpulent circumference, and his nose. wags with historical protuberances."-On the other hand, reflect but an instant on the character of your professed waterdrinker. He is a poor shrivelled wretch, "a man made after supper of a cheese-paring." His face is as thin as a hatchet, and so sharp, that if you run against it, ten to one, it would cut you. There is no trusting the brute, he would swindle his own father for a piece of toast to his water. If he ever indulges in his potations, he does it with mean timidity—a half starved glass of negus, perhaps― "that effeminate compromise between the wish for wine and the propriety of water." What What says

Falstaff of such miscreants? "There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof, for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness, and then when they marry, they get wenches; they are generally fools and cowards, which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good Sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, drives me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes, which delivered o'er to the voice, (the tongue,) which is the birth, becomes excellent wit The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and addict themselves to sack."

While thus advocating the virtues of drunkenness, I should be unjust to the cause were I to prætermit (as Mr. Southey says) the mention of that inveterate high priest of Bacchus, the late Ebenezer Swill-tub,* my companion in propinose

Mr. Ebenezer Swill-tub, though a glorious and right valiant toper, must give way to a more experienced and ingenious bibber, recorded by the English opium eater, who,

jucundities. He was a toper of the ruddiest complexion, none of your three-parts water drinkers; but a good half-and-half tippler. In form he resembled a sausage with a physiognomical empyreum studded with constellations. His eyes were as green as gooseberries, and his mulberry-tinted nose was sown with a flowery plantation, which, like tollkeepers on the high-way, kept strict account of every bottle that had passed his lips. Not a carbuncle but had some tale attached to it. One was gained in a hard day's skirmish at the Mayor's feast, while others blushed at the remembered prowess of a club-night.

Punch was Ebenezer's favorite liquor; but as he felt a hydrophobia at the sight of water, it was penuriously used. His stories were delicious, his remarks acutely ingenious. Truth, he said, was supposed to lie at the bottom of a well; but he thought that her fittest resting-place would be found at the bottom of the punch-bowl. His mind, like his stomach, was capacious; and it was a favorite opinion with him, that though genius was the nurse of sensibility, yet that one great source of poetic melancholy was the sight of an empty bot

sooner than be deprived of his diurnal deglutitions, got drunk upon a beef-steak. "The force of genius could no further go."

tle. I leave it to people of tender fancy to appreciate the insinuating pathos of this apophthegm.

But alas for ill-fated Albion, the reign of intoxication, like this essay, is fast drawing to a close. We have no Ebenezer Swill-tubs now-a-days, no hosts who put the key of the dinner-room in their pockets, no sage philosophers who spend their happiest hours under the table. We are a good-fornothing set, a crew of pale-blooded milk-sops. A nasal polypus is a rarity; a snout like Bardolph's is a thing not to be sneezed at; but a carbuncle is an optical phænomenon. The duty of getting drunk is superseded by the superior duty of the Excise; and what will be the melancholy result, heaven alone can tell. The immediate consequences are awfully serious! Our national character is degraded; and should the French threaten an invasion, instead of meeting with jolly opponents, who by reason of their seeing double would naturally see with two-fold acuteness, they will encounter a pack of skinny bloodless ghosts, the starved relics of the "olden tyme." Then will the reign of anarchy commence, a national bankruptcy ensue, the Beef-eaters be reduced, the Bishops be restricted to three bottles of wine per day, and the Court of Aldermen be compelled to give their turtle feasts upon credit.