distinguished characteristics of their profession about them, though they have not yet lost one half of themselves by a hemiplegia, nor the use of all their limbs by the gout, though they are but moderately mangy, and though the impending dropsy may not yet appear, I will venture to affirm, that the health they boast of is at best but an awkward state between sickness and health: if they are not actually sick, they are not actively well, and you will always find some complaint or other, inadvertently dropped from the triumphant soaker, within half an hour af ter he has assured you that he is neither sick nor sorry. My wife, who is a little superstitious, and perhaps too apt to point out and interpret judgments, otherwise an excellent woman, firmly believes, that the dropsy, of which most soakers finally die, is a manifest and just judgment upon them; the wine they so much loved being turned into water, and themselves drowned at last in the element they so much abhorred.

A rational and sober man, invited by the wit and gayety of good company, and hurried away by an uncommon flow of spirits, may happen to drink too much, and perhaps accidentally to get drunk; but then these sallies will be short, and not frequent; whereas the soaker is an utter stranger to wit and mirth, and no friend to either.

His business is serious, and he applies himself seriously to it; he steadily pursues the

numbing, stupifying, and petrifying, not the animating and exhilarating, qualities of the wine. Gallons of the Nepenthé would be lost upon him. The more he drinks the duller he grows; his politics become more obscure, and his narratives more tedious and less intelligible; till at last, maudlin, he employs what little articulation he has left, in relating his doleful tale to an insensible audience. I fear my countrymen have been too long noted for this manner 3 of drinking, since a very old and eminent French historian, (Froissart,) speaking of the English, who were then in possession of AquiStain, the promised land of claret, says, "Ils se saoulerent grandement, et se divertirent moult tristement à la mode de leur païs.

A very skilful surgeon of my acquaintance assured me, that, having opened the body of a soaker, who died of an apoplexy, he had found all the finer tubes and vessels plugged up with the tartar of the wine he had swallowed, so as to render the circulation of the blood absolutely impossible, and the folds of the stomach so stiffened with it, that it could not perform its functions. He compared the body of the deceased to a syphon, so choked up with the tartar and dregs of the wine that had run through it, as to be impervious. I adopted this image, which seemed to me a just one, and I shall for the future typify the soaker by the syphon, suction being equally the business of both. An object, viewed at once, and in its full extent,

will sometimes strike the mind, when the several parts and gradations of it, separately seen, would be but little attended to. I shall therefore here present the society of syphons with a calculation, of which they cannot dispute the truth, and will not, I believe, deny the moderation; and yet, perhaps, they will be surprised when they see the gross sums of wine they suck, of the money they pay for it, and of the time they lose, in the course of seven years only.

I reckon that I put a stanch syphon very low, when I put him only at two bottles a day, one with another. This in seven years amounts to four thousand four hundred and ten bottles,* which makes twenty hogsheads and seventy bottles.

Supposing this quantity to cost only four shillings a bottle, which I take to be the lowest price of claret, the sum amounts to eight hundred and eighty-two pounds. Allowing every syphon but six hours a day to suck his two bottles in, which is a short allowance, that time amounts to six hundred and thirty-eight days, eighteen hours, one full quarter of his life, for the above-mentioned seven years. Can any rational being coolly consider these three gross sums, of wine, and consequently distempers swallowed, of money lavished, and time lost, without shame, regret, and a resolution of reformation?

* This is incorrect. The number of bottles is 5110.

I am well aware that the numerous society of syphons will say, like Sir Tunbelly, "What would this fellow have us do?" To which I am at no loss for an answer. Do any thing else. Preserve and improve that reason, which was given you to be your guide through this world, and to a better. Attend to, and discharge, your religious, your moral, and your social duties. These are occupations worthy of a rational being; they will agreeably and usefully employ your time, and will banish from your breasts that tiresome listlessness, or those tormenting thoughts, from which you endeavour, though in vain, to fly. Is your retrospect uncomfortable? Exert yourselves in time to make your prospect better; and let the former serve as a back ground to the latter. Cultivate and improve your minds, according to ht your several educations and capacities. There are several useful books suited to them all. True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure the truest.

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Cantabrigius drinks nothing but water, and rides more miles in the year than the keenest sportsman, and with almost equal velocity. The former keeps his head clear, the latter his body in health. It is not from himself that he runs, but to his acquaintance, a synonymous term for his friends. Internally safe, he seeks no sanctuary from himself, no intoxication for his mind. His penetration makes him discover

and divert himself with the follies of mankind, which his wit enables him to expose with the truest ridicule, though always without personal offence: cheerful abroad, because happy at home; and thus happy, because virtuous!

DUELLING.

The custom of duelling is most evidently "the result of the passions of the many, and of the designs of a few;" but here the definition stops; since, far from being "the ape of reaIt is son," it prevails in open defiance of it. the manifest offspring of barbarity and folly, a monstrous birth, and distinguished by the most shocking and ridiculous marks of both its pa

rents.

I would not willingly give offence to the politer part of my readers, whom I acknowl edge to be my best customers, and therefore 1 will not so much as hint at the impiety of this practice; nor will I labour to show how repugnant it is to instinct, reason, and every moral and social obligation, even to the fashionable fitness of things. Viewed on the criminal side, it excites horror; on the absurd side, it is an inexhaustible fund of ridicule. The guilt has been considered and exposed by abler pens than mine, and indeed ought to be censured with more dignity than a fugitive weekly paper can pretend to: I shall therefore content myself with ridiculing the folly of it.