chance, and that many other people are better in health without alcoholic liquor. But for many it is a good thing. I know it is a good thing for myself. I have virtually abstained on various occasions for months together and have no difficulty in doing so. Nor does it affect me prejudicially at first. But after a time my brain suffers from lack of nutrition and will not work so well. I derive immediate benefit from the use of wine or beer. Perhaps I should add that I come of abstemious parentage and was very sparing all my youth. Once when at school I got a wound on the finger at cricket, which obstinately refused to heal. At last the surgeon, having exhausted his art, ordered me a glass of port wine every day. The place healed at once. I have seen many cases in which the moderate use of alcoholic liquor as an article of diet has been equally beneficial. But it is a mistake to lay down absolute rules. There is no law applicable to everybody; individuals differ so much. I suppose it is true enough that many people drink too much, yet never exceed to intoxication. But then, we are all always doing things too much.' We eat too much, work too much, and talk too much. What is too much '? What is the final test and the object of life? Let us remember that there is something more obnoxious to God and man than mere physical excess: and that is self-righteousness, and the desire to regulate our neighbours' lives by some little formula which happens to suit ourselves.

CHAPTER II

DRINK IN THE PAST

EXCESSIVE indulgence in strong drink has prevailed in this country from the earliest times. We may go back century after century until all records fail, and find the same complaints about the appalling havoc wrought by drink, the bad habits of the people, the superabundance of public-houses and the need for measures of reform, reappearing again and again as something new. The evidence left by writers from age to age is sufficiently continuous to show that we have always been a drunken nation, and sufficiently explicit to prove beyond the possibility of denial that in times past the evil has been incomparably greater than anything within modern experience. As with crime, poverty, ignorance, brutal customs, and the prevalence of disease, so with drink -the good old times' of which we hear so much were disfigured by a condition of things which would be intolerable in the present day. In what follows I shall try to make good these observations by putting together some of the more interesting facts recorded in the past. For that purpose I have drawn freely on various authors and particularly on

Valpy French and Lecky. So few people, however, appear to be acquainted with those writers that I make no apology for reproducing a good deal of matter from their pages, together with some of my own.

We do not know much about the ancient Britons, but it is recorded that they used three kinds of intoxicating liquor-mead or metheglin made from honey, beer made from barley, and cider; and, however sober they may have been in ordinary life, they could on occasions get drunk and disorderly with anybody. The occasions were mostly religious festivals, and it is worth noting that ever since, up to the present day, religious ceremonies have always been observed by the common people as their chief opportunities for drunkenness. Weddings, christenings, and, above all, funerals are celebrated in this way, which explains the true object of burial clubs. The line We drew his club money this morning' in a recent comic song has an inner meaning which might escape the uninitiated. But that is a digression. The Romans, who appreciated strong drink, like all conquering races, introduced wine and viticulture, but under the Saxons mead and beer were still the chief liquors. These heroes brought with them the custom of pledging healths, which continued through succeeding centuries until a comparatively recent period, and has been repeatedly blamed by different observers at various times as a great cause of intemperance in the higher ranks of society. Probably with justice. If not the cause, it is certainly the

occasion of drunkenness. Its abandonment by English society, save in a ceremonious sense, during the nineteenth century has coincided with a notable improvement, while in other countries where it is still practised-Scandinavia and Hungary-orgies were common only the day before yesterday, and are not unknown to-day. Among the more sober nations of Europe, on the other hand, it has never obtained.

The Saxons were mighty eaters and drinkers. The mead-horn plays a great part in the very earliest literature, and already in the sixth century the temperance movement definitely began. Members of the Church of England Temperance Society will be glad to know that it began with the Church, but that, unfortunately, was because the Church required it. St. Gildas the Wise (A.D. 570), observing with pain that not only the laity but also the clergy were scandalously given to habits of intoxication, issued some rules to his monks, and ordained that if any one, through drinking too freely, gets thick of speech so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.' This does not err on the side of severity, and the test is charmingly naïve, but at any rate the blame was laid on the culprit. St. David (A.D. 569) took a more modern view and punished the publican in addition, so to speak. His monks were also accustomed to go about and get drunk in a friendly way, so he ordained among other rules that he that forces another to get drunk out of hospitality must do penance as if he had got drunk himself.' However, things seem to have gone on

much the same until we come to King Edgar, who, at the instance of Dunstan, made the first attempt at sobriety by Act of Parliament-if the anachronism may be allowed-as near as may be 1,000 years ago. He suppressed a great number of ale-houses, and, in order to lessen the depth of his subjects' potations, invented' drinking to pegs,' which would be equivalent to regulating the size of the tumbler. People used to drink then out of wooden pots holding half a gallon, and the King had eight pegs or pins inserted, dividing the pot into so many doses of half a pint, like a medicine bottle. But alas for human attempts to circumvent the demon of drink! Drinking to pegs presently became a merry pastime, and a means of encouraging intoxication, like buzzing' in the nineteenth century; and at no distant date Anselm had to forbid his clergy expressly to go to drinking-bouts and drink to pegs.' Meanwhile the Danes had come upon the scene and made things worse, as they were still more valiant potmen than the Saxons and more given to toasts. Waes hael' and 'drine hael '-if that is right-went more merrily than ever. The Normans are credited with having introduced some refinement, but, like other conquerors, they went down in their turn before the conquered. William of Malmesbury (A.D. 1130) remarks that the Saxon nobility passed entire nights and, days in drinking, and consumed their whole substance in mean and despicable houses'; and he adds that they imparted the qualities of over-eating and over-drinking to their conquerors. At this time