Dreux), used, as Balzac tells us, to go from café to café, as a workman goes from tavern to tavern, and, to use Balzac's own words, "est mort brûlé." Strangely enough, Balzac himself died of excessive coffee-drinking. Wine, he assures us, had no effect upon him; and he was habitually a water-drinker at his meals. Tobacco he avoided like the plague; he feared it for many reasons, but chiefly because he regarded it as a destroyer of energy. Journalism and cigar-smoking sufficed, according to him, to explain the paucity of great works produced in France at a period when the country possessed an abundance of able writers. The cigar indisposed them for continued exertion, and the journal asked them for nothing, indeed, would accept nothing from them, but articles, short tales, and fragments of novels, of which it was positively an advantage that each should be finished separately. The writer," says Balzac somewhere, "should, like the ancient knight, keep his arms always bright and ready for service." But, if Balzac never obscured his intellect, he certainly indulged in what he thought best calculated to stimulate it. He avoided the cigar, and was convinced that some halfdozen of his friends in the literary and artistic world, who had died of that terrible "softening of the spinal marrow" which, in a certain class, has attacked so many during the last twenty years, had, in fact, been killed by tobacco-smoking. On the other hand, he would sit up night after night, working incessantly, and stimulating his energies with repeated potions of coffee, so strong that, by his own account, a few spoonfuls of it, would have produced in most persons all the symptoms of a fever.

Indeed, human nature would appear to be so weak, that wherever men take stimulants, and whatever stimulants they take, a certain number are sure to indulge in them to excess. The, Temperance Society has, no doubt, done an immense deal of good in England, and total abstinence seems a very proper thing to prescribe for people, to whom it would be vain to recommend moderation in the use of intoxicating liquors. But we have yet to learn that teetotallers, inaccessible though they be to the, temptations of drink, are equally sure not to yield to the attractions of other vices just as enervating and destructive. Those who abstain from one particular vice through motives of prudence alone,

may yet give themselves up to another which they think they can cultivate with impunity, or without any further loss than is involved in paying away the money actually spent in gratifying their favourite propensity. If a man gives up drinking from a conviction, that to run the chance of getting intoxicated, by making even one step in that direction, is sinful, then we have a right to suppose that his religious feeling will make him lead: a life of sobriety in all respects. But if he becomes a water-> drinker because he is unable to drink fermented liquors temperately, and because, if he drinks them intemperately, he cannot. pursue his occupation the next day, then he is doubtless a sensible man for taking "the pledge;" but he is not necessarily a virtuous one, any more than a man can be called virtuous because he puts away money every year in the savings bank. But, principle apart, are the tea and coffee drinkers likely to drink tea and coffee to excess? Is it probable, for instance, that they will be led on to take "just one cup more," as men are sometimes led on to take glass after glass of wine and spirits. We think not, in spite of Balzac's unhappy end, which might have been prognosticated from his own confessions, and of what Balzac had himself told his readers about the fate of Chenavard. Still, every body knows the effect six glasses of brandy and water would produce on any ordinary man. And if any one doubts whether excessively strong tea be equally injurious, let him pour a pint of boiling water on six spoonfuls of half black tea half green, and drink the infusion in the usual Unless he has habituated his nerves to an excitant of such a strength and character as this, he will find his temples throb beneath its influence; his sense of touch, of sight, perhaps even of hearing, will be deranged; he will, perhaps, suffer more from his forced wakefulness, with its inevitable visions, than a drunkard would suffer in consequence of a terrible debauch. We do not say positively that tea and coffee do as much injury, either physically or morally, as spirituous liquors; but they are excitants, and may be taken to excess, and we should like to know whether teetotallers say those who have been teetotallers for a dozen years-ever drink more or stronger tea and coffee than is good for them. Again, and above all, do they smoke

manner.

too much? We have been acquainted with teetotallers who were great smokers-who in fact smoked almost perpetually; and we should like to know whether, as a rule, teetotallers smoke more or less than those who do not debar themselves altogether from intoxicating drink. In fine, do teetotallers (we speak not of the newly converted, but of those who have had a long experience of the system) manage to get through life without stimulants of any kind? Is there at the present moment any nation in the world that does not indulge in some particular excitant, if not in several (such as tea and opium in China, and coffee and tobacco in Turkey); and has there been any instance of such abstinence on the part of any nation since the world began? To speak only of modern times, what did our forefathers take in the way of stimulants before alcohol, tobacco, tea, or coffee were known—for all these things are comparatively of recent introduction into Europe?

The only records to which we can look for information as to the customs of the English during the last century, in connection with the subject we are discussing, are the earliest of our novels, and especially those of Richardson. From these it certainly appears that Englishmen did not smoke much in the eighteenth century, but that they drank at least three times as much as they do now. Lovelace, though drinking was by no means his favourite vice, used to drink at all hours of the day, and so did all his friends, even to the quietest and most respectable ones. Pamela's father, wishing to look neat and cool after a long walk, and before presenting himself to Mr. B., puts on a clean collar and drinks a pot of ale. Mr. B. himself is described as an eminently sober man; but it is mentioned as a remarkable fact, that after the first dinner party at which his wife was present, very few of the gentlemen made their appearance in the drawing-room in a state of intoxication.

Which are the nations most particularly celebrated for their addiction to particular stimulants?

In 1732 tobacco was made a legal tender in Maryland at one penny a pound; and at present, in some parts of Siberia, tea, moistened with bullocks' blood, and pressed into cakes of a

VOL. III.

D

certain size ("brick tea," as it is called), serves as a standard of value in place of money. The Turks say that coffee without tobacco is like meat without salt; and the sober and gallant Spaniards have a proverb to the effect, that a cigarette, a glass of water, and a kiss from a pretty girl, will support a man for a day. To judge from the significant customs, and equally significant proverbs that we have quoted, it would appear that the Siberians are great tea-drinkers, and that the Americans, the Turks, and the Spaniards, are pre-eminent among the tobaccosmoking nations of the earth. It is difficult, however, to reconcile all these proverbs and customs with statistics. The Americans and Turks certainly consume more than their fair share of tobacco, but not so the Spaniards; nor can the Siberians pass for extravagant drinkers of tea, when it is remembered that, in the towns of Russia proper, every one takes tea twice a-day, and that, notwithstanding this, the entire amount of tea imported into the Russian dominions is to that imported into Great Britain in the proportion of 1 to 64. The great majority of the Russian peasants, however, are too poor to buy tea except on holidays and on special occasions; then, in all parts of Russia, tea is drunk much weaker than in England, so that the Siberians may after all be, in their way, great tea-drinkers, and their custom of making use of tea as a substitute for money, may really have that significance which one is inclined to attribute to it at first sight. We may perhaps explain in a similar way, the seeming contradiction between the facts, that the Spaniards in their national proverbs celebrate, with much emphasis, the all-importance of tobacco; and that, according to the official returns, the average consumption of tobacco per head in Spain is only 4.75 pounds, whereas in France it is. 5.50, in Austria 6·75, in Holland 8.25, and in some parts of Germany as much as 12.50. Yet there may be as many and as constant smokers in Spain as in Germanyindeed, according to veracious travellers, such is decidedly the case; only in Germany men smoke tobacco in pipes, whereas in Spain they consume it almost invariably in the form of cigarettes. We fancy a pound of tobacco will last a cigarette-smoker at least three times as long as it would last a pipe-smoker of equal fumigatory application.

Balzac, in the "Traité des Excitants Modernes," already referred to, remarks that the destinies of a nation depend on its food and regimen. Gin and whisky killed the North American Indian (Brillat-Savarin says somewhere, that alcohol has been as formidable a destructive agent as gunpowder). Who knows that the abuse of chocolate has not had something to do with the degradation of the Spanish nation, which, just when chocolate was discovered, was about to recommence the Romans' empire? "Tobacco," he continues, "has already punished the Turks and the Dutch, and threatens Germany." "Smoking nations," he afterwards observes, "such as the Dutch, who were the first people in Europe to smoke,"1 are essentially apathetic and dull. Holland has no surplus population. The ichthyophagic diet to which she has given herself up—the use of salted provisions, and a certain Touraine wine, strongly impregnated with alcohol-counteracts, to some extent, the effects of the tobacco; but Holland will always belong to whoever likes to take it—it only exists through the jealousy of the other cabinets, who would not allow it to become French.

It is quite certain that the Turks lose their energy at a very early age, and also that they are great smokers (there are, however, no statistics on the subject, the Turks being doubtless too lazy to prepare them); the general quietude of the Germans has also, very possibly, something to do with their eternal pipesmoking; but the Dutch, at Waterloo, proved themselves as good soldiers as those of any nation; and Holland, since the peace, has been doing an immense colonial trade, and has been gradually enriching herself. It is notorious, in particular, that she has known how to profit by her position in Japan; and she has free institutions, which her adverse critics do not possess, and the great majority of her population lead, doubtless not an active, but an easy and comfortable life. We think, then, that to say smoking has ruined the Dutch is a double error. We have seen that the average annual consumption of tobacco there per head, is 8-25 pounds; whereas in Northern Germany, where the people certainly cannot be said to be worn out, it is 12:50. Com

1 This is an error. Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the Spaniards in 1559. It was not smoked generally in Holland until 1570,