flesh have taken on him, while his ful nourishment. This is one of easy neighbour, who is ten times as the chief elements of mischief in amenable to the same charges, goes those affairs where historians tell on sinning at large without disturb- us of hardy and temperate soldiers ing his own conscience or the rest enervated by the indolent and of the world about the matter. The luxurious habits of the people they raving there has been among us have invaded -as in many inof late about narcotics and stimu- stances, from Hannibal's army in lants has, in fact, confused our Italy downwards. Their poverty, vision and our faculties of discrim- but not their will, consents in the ination. In their rage against the general case of communities underworking man for offending them with the smell of his alcoholic compound and his bad tobacco, the respectables will not fairly measure his failings with those of the rest of mankind. But if we take averages, I am disposed to question whether he is much worse than his neighbours, and especially whether the average German is so much above him as many of our own people maintain him to be.

On the contrary, looking upon our working population, head-workers as well as hand-workers, as the stamina of the country, and taking them as they are with all their defects, I see them elevating our country to an amount of material wealth and greatness far beyond the possible attainments of any other portion of the world. Be our defects what they may, other countries have graver. In Germany especially, I find four heavy weights call them domestic, social, or by any other name you like-which press down the population, and while tolerated as they are, will ever prevent it from achieving any high position either of greatness or of goodness. These weights are 1. Excess in eating.

air.

2. Excess in beer-drinking. 3. Excess in smoking.

feeding themselves; where there are the means, the defect is apt to be on the other side. Nor do the fasting ordinances of the Church of Rome do much to avert the evil. Setting aside a portion of Ireland, Brittany, and some parts of Scandanavia, where there is extreme poverty — keeping in view only the portions of Europe where the people are well off, and adjust the scale of their living more by choice and taste than from necessity — I have no doubt that the people of Scotland are the most frugal feeders in Europe; and if we look for results, among what people shall we find a better development whether of brain or muscle?

We have been accustomed in the North to speak of the Englishman as a great eater, but in comparison with the German he is naught, and in a general estimate of the gluttonous propensities and capacities of European nations, I think it likely that he would hold a moderate place. He is apt to be fussy and talkative as to his eating, and to be loudly confessorial and deprecatory about it, as about all his other defects. Accustomed to being twitted by his northern neighbour on this head, he feels a diffidence about taking note of brother Her

4. Excess in the inhalation of foul man's wonderful performances at

As to the first, there is no doubt a point up to which it is good both for his body and his mind that man should feed. There are instances only too abundant of degeneration caused by insufficiency of food. But there is mischief also from the habitual consumption of an excess over the quantity suited for health

table; but a Scotsman feels himself free to record his amazement that the human frame should be trained to the accomplishment of such achievements in gluttony.

Take an average man of business in London or Liverpool. At ten o'clock he is delivered at the scene of his labours, say in the public service or in his own. From that

time to six o'clock he has been in- Germany how difficult it was to cessantly occupied with affairs obtain a morsel of food in the some of them complex and difficult midst of the journey. The correc-some of them mere matters of tion of this deficiency, however, easy routine. He has been able to was a feat to which the national snatch five minutes for luncheon, genius was quite equal, and it was and that has sufficed. Meanwhile speedily remedied. The feedingHerman, besides absorbing a gal- places on the German lines are, in lon, or perhaps two, of beer, and better etymology than either ours exhaling half a pound of tobacco, or the French, called Restaurations. has consumed no end of soup, sodden As an estimate or guess, which may beef, roast veal, cutlets, ham, poultry, be taken at its own value, I would prawns, fermented cabbage, potato- say that on any ordinary hundred salad, asparagus, stewed prunes, miles of German railway the eating apple tart, and every other kind of and drinking facilities are five eatable he could get at. He has eaten out from one to two hours of the mid-day in which the Englishman has been at his hardest work. And if we follow our countryman home from his business, much as we hear of English luxury and high living, we shall probably find that he has made his dinner on a chop and a potato or two. In great houses there are several courses, more as matter of state than because the partakers indulge in long and varied meals. With those whose household establishment is not on a pompous model, but who can easily afford themselves luxuries, I am disposed to think that in England courses more than two are the exception rather than the rule. There are, no doubt, here and there full feeders and foul feeders; but they are the exception and rather under discountenance, even should they only reach the ordinary average of gluttony which one sees every day in the German gasthauses.

times those offered on an English line. Here and there is an immense buffet, where all the elements of an abundant and varied meal exist, and ample time is given for their consumption. Then there are numerous stoppages for ten minutes or so, where there is a counter well filled with slices of ham and cold veal, sausages, fruit, and liquors of all kinds. When the stoppages are short, men and women are in prompt attendance with sandwiches and glasses of beer; and I have noted it as as exception to the slovenly lazy way in which all business is transacted in Germany, that these ministers to the need or greed of the wayfarer are prompt, active, and remarkably intelligent; the exigency of their duty, which is to provide that their fellow-countrymen shall not be subject to the horror of remaining one half-hour without food and drink, having awakened within them a promptitude and efficiency which the less momentous functions of the rest of their countrymen have been insufficient to stimulate.

It is wonderful to contemplate the laborious accuracy with which every demand for needful sustentation is met by the necessary supply. What a contrast with wanderings in Kerry, or even in the Highlands of Scotland! There is no going to an eminent waterfall

By the way, I have an idea that travellers in Germany have been inclined to be charitable to German gluttony, on account of the convenience they have felt from it. Where food is thrown everywhere broadcast, the traveller, who may be ignorant of the language and the customs of the people he is among, gets some portions of it, and is tolerant, or perhaps laudatory to the customs which have thrown tain-pass-to a distinguished scene it in his way. I remember when of any kind- without finding an railways were in their infancy in abundantly stocked tavern spread

to a moun

ing its hospitable board for you. a sort of blasphemy to hint that Nay, if you take to one of those any evil can come of eating, since mountains which have an establish- it is a solace largely indulged in by ed repute in German scenery, you many of the professors of abstinshall find a comfortable tavern on ence. I admit that turtle sausage the top. The castle of the Wart- and roast pig will not rouse a man burg, celebrated as Luther's hiding- to knock down a policeman or stab place, is not half-an-hour's walk his wife; but neither will muchfrom Eisenach, full of taverns, and abused tobacco, for that matter. the railway station with an abun- For influence, however, on the gendant restauration; yet at the great eral condition, I am prepared to gate your eye is caught by an in- hold that there is more of health scription informing you where the and life destroyed by over-eating nearest Gasthaus is, so important than by stimulants and narcotics. is it to the German mind to pro- Even in our own country one meets vide that no son of Fatherland shall with too many members of the run the risk of being half-an-hour comfortable classes whose constiwithout eating and drinking, and tutions are palpably damaged by how little is it supposed that the good living, and the mark of the scenery or the historical and ecclesiastical associations of the place can compensate for so long a suspension of the great functions of existence.

With us even the professed epicure or high liver a person by no means treated with social deference-exercises a certain amount of restraint. He is generally a late diner, reserving his powers for the great occasion. He has traditions of the fastings and trainings which people with his propensities will endure for the purpose of bringing a sufficient appetite to bear upon a sumptuous meal. We are much laughed at for the solemnity with which we invest great dinners. If we want to celebrate a success or a calamity; if we have to inaugurate the majority of an illustrious person, or proclaim the distress of the manufacturing districts, or the failure of the potato crop, the ceremony must assume the aspect of a great feast. But even in this there is a testimony to abstinence or moderation, at all events as the rule of life.

The German cannot come out in the same manner. Every day and all day long he eats as much rich food as he can, and therefore to him a special feast is a special practical absurdity.

I am aware that in the midst of the wild outcry against stimulants and narcotics, it will be considered

internal enemy is visible in the countenance of the whole German family. I remember once imparting a terrible shock to the nerves of a lady belonging to the exceedingly comfortable classes. She had been denouncing that filthy and abominable practice of smoking, and boasted that she had just got the parent of a large family dismissed from his employment because she had caught him indulg. ing in a furtive pipe. I asked her if she had ever herself committed the act of eating turbot with lobster sauce. The imputation was not to be denied, since the empty platter which had contained that attractive but pernicious mixture was just giving place to another laden with well-seasoned haunch; nor, to do her justice, did she seem desirous to evade any conclusions that might be drawn from such an act; when I amazed her by saying that, according to my experience, she might indulge herself with a cigar or a pipe of latakia with much less prejudice to the digestive functions.

But while naturally enough indisposed to quarrel with Herman about his good table, it surprises one that those who rave so against drinking in this country should never have a word to throw at him,nay, should sometimes adduce him as an example to be followed. What is set up as the master-vice among

pint or even his bottle of port after did, night after night, the same dinner, or his night-cap before set of cronies, to pursue with them going to bed, he has got through the same orgies. What they have. the business of the day first-he got into the way of enjoying, or has not been indulging from morning to night. Nor is he prepared, perhaps, absolutely to justify his practice it is a weakness, and every man has some weakness. Indeed the great feature distinguishing us in this matter from the Germans is, that the use of stimulants in all forms is looked askance at, and connected more or less with

*Histoire des Hotelleries, Cabarets, Courtillés, et des anciennes Communautés et Confrériés, &c.' Par Francisque Michel et Edouard Fournier. 2 vols. 8vo. 1859