The late dining hours may make the social circle more formal,
but they have been far less favourable to drinking propensities. After
such dinners as ours are now, suppers are clearly out of the question.
One is astonished to look back and recall the scenes to which were
attached associations of hilarity, conviviality, and enjoyment. Drinking
parties were protracted beyond the whole Sunday, having begun by a
dinner on Saturday; imbecility and prostrate helplessness were a common
result of these bright and jovial scenes; and by what perversion of
language, or by what obliquity of sentiment, the notions of pleasure
could be attached to scenes of such excess--to the nausea, the disgust
of sated appetite, and the racking headache--it is not easy to explain.
There were men of heads so hard, and of stomachs so insensible, that,
like my friend Saunders Paul, they could stand anything in the way of
drink. But to men in general, and to the more delicate constitutions,
such a life must have been a cause of great misery. To a certain extent,
and up to a certain point, wine may be a refreshment and a wholesome
stimulant; nay, it is a medicine, and a valuable one, and as such, comes
recommended on fitting occasions by the physician. _Beyond_ this point,
as sanctioned and approved by nature, the use of wine is only
degradation. Well did the sacred writer call wine, when thus taken in
excess, "a mocker.
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