the large quantity of perspirable matter which will, therefore, be detained in, and, consequently, greatly foul the blood-from the dreadful symptoms, that attend a high degree of the scurvy; the relief of which by vegetables, by fresh meat, by liquids fitteft to remove the effects of a muriatic cause, plainly shews them to be owing to such a caufe. Whatever has the haut-gout may be looked upon as confifting of such active particles, as cannot but make our frequent eating of it very dangerous - as must render it much fitter to be used as phyfic, than as food. From a mixture of meats, each of them wholsome in its kind, a bad chyle may be formed and the rule in phyfic is, that an error in the first digestion will not be mended in the fecond. A delicate conftitution is, speedily, either quite destroyed, or irrecoverably difordered, when the diet is not exactly adapted to it is not fuch as leaft irritates, as least heats, as is most easily concocted, as foonest passes out of the body, and leaves the feweft impurities behind it there. The weakness, or the wrong formation, of a part of our frame is, generally, a call to the utmost care about our food; and as our observing this may extend our life, even under either of those circumstances, as far as we could have hoped it would have been prolonged, if we had been with out any fuch defect; fo our failure therein may, in a very short time, be fatal to us. The most simple aliment will, perhaps, be unable to hinder our feeling, in some degree, the bad confequences of the difeafes, or irregularities of our parents: but how far they shall affect us, depends, very often, in a great measure, upon ourselves. They may neither much contract the term, nor much interrupt the comfort, of life, if we will make hunger our fauce, and, in every meal we eat, regard the dif tempers we inherit; but early, alas! and heavy will our fufferings be, our years few and full of uneasiness, when, without any such regard, our taste is directed by that of the found and athletic when the folicitations of appetite lead us to forget the reafons we have to restrain it. In this climate and country, where, for so many months in the year, the cuticular discharges are so small-where the air so often, so suddenly, and to fo great a degree, varies its equilibrium, and where our vessels, therefore, are as frequently, as fuddenly, and as greatly contracted or expanded-where fogs so much abound, and fo much contribute to impair the elasticity of our fibres to hinder the proper both fecretions and excretions-to destroy the due texture of the blood, and vitiate our whole habit, it must be obvious, what we have to fear, when our aliment hurts us in the same way with our air-when the one heightens the disorder, to which we are exposed by the other. An inattention to the nutriment fit for us, when we feldom use any exercise, or, always, very gentle-when our life is fedentary, either from the business by which we maintain ourselves, or from our love of ease, or from our literary pursuits, is perhaps, as fatal to us, as almost any inftance of wrong conduct, with which we can be chargeable. By high feeding and little or no exercise, we are not only exposed to the most dangerous diseases, but we make all diseases dangerous: we make those so, which would, otherwise, be flight and easily removed-we do not only fubject ourselves to the particular maladies, which have their rife wholly from luxury, but we render ourselves more liable to those, which have no connexion with it. We, then, are among the first, who are feized with the distempers, which the constitution of the air occafions-We are most apt to receive all those of the infectious kind-We take cold whence we might least fear it; and find its immediate consequence, a malignant or an inflammatory fever, or fome other disease equally to be dreaded. A writer in physic of the first rank afferts, that our diet is the chief cause of all our diseases that other causes only take effect from the difpofition of our body, and the state of its humours. There is, I am perfuaded, much truth in this affertion. For, as in countries, where the inhabitants greatly indulge themselves, few die of old age; so where a strict temperance is observed, few die but of old age. We find, likewife, persons, as Socrates for instance, who, by their regular living, have preserved themselves from the infection of a disease, that has made the cruellest havock around them. We perceive, alfo, the reflorers of health usually attempting its recovery by some or other discharge, by draining the body in some way or other. And if evacuation is the cure of our disorders, we may juftly think, that repletion is their mott general general cause. But if this may admit of a difpute, which, I think, it hardly can do; yet is it on all hands agreed that there are feveral distempers, to which few are subject but for want of felf-denial in themselves, or their ancestors that most of these distempers are of the painfullest fort, and that fome of them are such as we for years lament, without the least hope of recovery, and under an abfolute certainty, that the longer they continue upon us the more grievoufly they will distress us; the acuteness of our fufferings from them will be conftantly increasing. Dean Bolton. §134. On Intemperance in Eating. Let me, also, confider intemperance in what we eat, as frequently interrupting the use of our nobler faculties; and fure, at length, greatly to enfeeble them. How long is it, before we are really ourselves, after our ftomach has received its full load! Under it, our senses are dulled, our memory clouded, heaviness and stupidity possess us: fome bours muft pafs, before our vivacity returns, before reafon can again act with its full vigour. The man is not feen to advantage, his real abilities are not to be difcovered, till the effects of his gluttony are removed, till his conftitution has thrown off the weight that oppressed it. The hours preceding a plentiful meal, or those, which succeed its entire digestion, are, we all find, such, in which we are fittest to transact our affairs, in which all the acts of the understanding are best exerted. How small a part of his time is therefore, the luxurious man himself! What between the length of his repafts-the space during which he is, as it were, stupified by his excess in them-the many hours of fleep that he wants to refresh, and of exercise to ftrengthen him; within how small a compass is that portion of his life brought, in which his rational powers are fitly difplayed! In the vigour of youth, in the full ftrength of manhood, an uncontrouled gratification of appetite allows only short intervals of clear apprehenfion, of close attention, and the free use of our judgment: bat if, either through an uncommonly firm conffitution, or by spending all those hours in exercise, which are not passed at our tables or in our beds, we are enabled, not withstanding fuch gratification, to reach a more advanced age; what a melancholy spectacle do we then frequently afford! our memory, our wit, our sense almost wholly destroyed their remains scarce allowing a conjecture to be formed thence, what they have been the ruins of the man hardly furnishing a trace of his former ornaments. Most of those diseases, which luxury brings upon our bodies are, indeed, a gradual impairing of our intellectual faculties: the mind shares the disorder of its companion, acts as that permits, discovers a greater or less capacity, according to the other's more or less perfect state. And as the body, when dead, is totally unfit to be acted upon by the foul; so the nearer it is brought to death by our gluttony, the more we increase its unfitness to display, by how noble a principle it it actuated-what the extent of those abilities is, which the bounty of our infinitely good and powerful Creator has afforded us. It only remains that I confider, how ruinous the excess I am cenfuring is to our fortune; and to what a mean dependence, to what vile dishonest practices, it often reduces us. There are few estates, that can bear the expence, into which what is called an elegant table will draw us. It is not only the price of what is set before us, that we are here to regard, but the waste that the minifters to our luxury occafion-their rapine -the example they set to all, who are concerned in our affairs, and the disqualification, under which we put ourselves to look into them. He who is determined to please his palate at any price, infects not only those about him with his extravagant turn; but gives them opportunities of defrauding him, which are seldom neglected. His house is the refort of the worst of mankind; for such they always are, whom a wellspread table assembles; and who, by applauding the profuseness that feeds them, by extolling, as proofs of a refined underftanding, what are the surest marks of a weak one, or rather of the total want of one, hurry on the ruin, that was, otherwise, with too much speed advancing. But small is their number, whom it concerns to be told, how a large fortune may be reduced: how the making any must be hindered, is the argument, in which the generality are interested. This hindrance is the fure, the undeniable consequence of giving way to our appetite. I have already observed, what hurt our very capacity often receives from it-to what a degree our intellect is at length impaired by it: I may, further, truly represent it as always indifpofing us to that diligence, to that application, without which no science is to be mastered, no art learned, no business well conducted, no valuable accomplishment, of any kind, obtained, Let us have our support, and feek the increase of our store, from our traffick, or from our labour; it is plain, that he who indulges himself less than we do, as he needs less to maintain him than we do, fo he can fell, or can work, cheaper, and must, therefore, make those advantages, which we are not to expect; must by his lesser gains be, at length, enriched, while we, with our larger, shall be in a constant poverty. A ftill worse effect of our luxurious turn I reckon those mean and base practices, to which it tempts us. When the plain meal, that our fcanty circumstances, after a liberal and expensive education, furnish, cannot content us; and we must either live at another's table, or provide a chargeable entertainment at our own; we defcend to the vileft flattery, the most servile complaifance; every generous sentiment is extinguished in us; we foon become fully convinced, that he, who will often eat at another's coft, must be subject to another's humours, muft countenance him in his and comply with him in his follies vices. Let his favour at length exempt us from so dishonourable an attendance, by furnishing us with the means of having plenty at home: yet what is plenty to the luxurious? His wantonnefs increases with his income; and, always needy, he is always dependent. Hence no sense of his birth or education, of honour or confcience, is any check upon him; he is the mean drudge, the abandoned tool of his feeder, of whoever will be at the charge of gratifying his palate, So, if our trade be our maintenance, as no fair gains can answer the expence, which what is called good eating occafions, we are foon led to indirect artifices, to fraudulent dealing, to the most tricking and knavish practices. In a word, neither our health nor lite, neither our credit nor fortune, neither our virtue nor understanding, have any security but from our temperance. The greatest blefings, which are here enjoyed by us, have it for their source, Hence it is that we have the fullest ule of our faculties, and the longest. Hence it is, that we fear not to be poor, and are fure to be independent. Hence disease and pain are removed from us, our decay advances insensibly, and the approaches of death are as gentle as those of fleep. Hence it is we free ourselves from all temptations to a base or ungenerous action. Hence it is that our passions are calmed, our lufts fubdued, the purity of our hearts preserved, and a virtuous conduct throughout made easy to us. When it is made fo-when by the ease, which we find in the practice of virtue, we become confirmed therein-render it habitual to us; we have then that qualification for happiness in a future state, which, as the best title to it, affords us the best grounds to expect it. Dean Bolton. § 135. On Intemperance in Drinking. SECT. I. The arguments against drunkenness, which the common reason of mankind suggests, are these us: The contemptible figure which it gives The hindrance it is to any confidence being reposed in us, fo far as our fecrecy is concerned: The dangerous advantage, which it affords the crafty and the knavish over us: The bad effects, which it hath on our health: The prejudice, which our minds receive from it: Its difpofing us to many crimes, and preparing us for the greatest: The contemptible figure, which drunkenness gives us, is no weak argument for avoiding it. Every reader has found the Spartans mentioned, as inculcating fobriety on their children, by expofing to their notice the behaviour of their slaves in a drunken fit. They thought, that were they to apply wholly to the reason of the youths, it might be to little purpose: as the force of the arguments, which they used, might not be fufficiently apprehended, or the impreffion thereof might be foon effaced: but when they made them frequently eye-witnesses of all the madness and absurdities, and at length the perfect senseleffnefs, which the immoderate draught occafioned; the the idea of the vile change would be so fixed in the minds of its beholders, as to render them utterly averse from its caufe. And may we not justly conclude it to be from hence, that the offspring of the perfons who are accustomed thus to disguise themselves, often prove remarkably fober? They avoid, in their riper years, their parent's crime, from the detestation of it, which they contracted in their earlier. As to most other vices, their debafing circumftances are not fully known to us, till we have attained a maturity of age, nor can be then, till they have been duly attended to: but in our very childhood, at our first beholding the effects of drunkenness, we are ftruck with astonishment, that a reasonable being should be thus changed-fhould be induced to make himself fuch an object of contempt and scorn. And, indeed, we must have the man in the utmost contempt, whom we hear and fee in his progress to excess; at first, teazing you with his contentiousness or impertinence-mistaking your meaning, and hardly knowing his own-then, faultering in his speechunable to get through an entire fentenceEis hard trembling-his eyes fwimminghis legs too feeble to fupport him; till, at length, you only know the human creature by his shape. I cannot but add, that were one of any fenie to have a just notion of all the filly things he fays or does, of the wretched appearance, which he makes in a drunken fit, he could not want a more powerful argament against repeating his crime. But as none of us are inclined to think ill of ourselves, we none of us will know, how far our vices expose us; we allow them excuses, which they meet not with from any but ourselves. This is the cafe of all; it is particularly fo with the drunken; many of whom their frame would undoubtedly reform, could they be brought to conceive, how much they did to be ashamed of. Nor is it improbable, that it is this very confideration, how much drunkenness contributes to make a man the contempt of his wife-his children-his servants of ail his fober beholders, which has been the cause, that it has never been the reigning vice among a people of any refinement of manners. No, it has only prevailed among the rude and savage, among those of grosser understandings, and less delicacy of fentiCrimes, as there are in all men, patre must be in all nations; but the more ment. civilized have perceived drunkenness to be fuch an offence against common decency, fuch an abandoning one's self to the ridicule and scoffs of the meanest, that, in whatever else they might tranfgrefs, they would not do it in this particular; but leave a vice of fuch a nature to the wild and uncultivated-to the stupid and undistinguishing part of mankind-to those, who had no notion of propriety of character, and decency of conduct. How late this vice became the reproach of our countrymen, we find in Mr. Camden's Annals. Under the year 1581, he has this observation"The English, who hitherto had, of all the " northern nations, shewn themselves the " least addicted to immoderate drinking, " and been commended for their fobriety, " first learned, in these wars in the Ne"therlands, to swallow a large quantity " of intoxicating liquor, and to destroy " their own health, by drinking that of " others." Some trace of our antient regard to fobriety, we may seem ftill to retain, in our use of the term fot! which carries with it as great reproach among us, as Οινοβαρες did among the Greeks. There is a short story, in Reresby's Memoirs, very proper to be mentioned under this head. The Lord Chancellor (Jefferies) had now like to have died of a fit of the stone; which he virtuously brought upon himself, by a furious debauch of wine, at Mr. Alderman Duncomb's; where he, the Lord Treasurer, and others, drank themselves into that height of frenzy, that, among friends, it was whispered, they had ftripped into their shirts; and that, had not an accident prevented them, they had got upon a fign-post, to drink the King's health; which was the subject of much derifion, to say no worse. Dean Bolton. Here then the artful person properly introducing the subject, urging us to enter upon it-and, after that, praising, or blaming, or contradicting, or questioning us, is foon able to draw from us whatever information he defires to obtain. Our difcretion never outlafts our fobriety. Failings which it most concerns us to conceal, and which, when we are ourselves, we do most industrioufly conceal, we usually publish, when we have drank to excess. The man is then clearly seen, with all the ill nature and bad qualities, from which his behaviour, in his cooler hours, had induced his most intimate friends to believe him wholly free. We must be loft to reflection, to thought, when we can thus far throw off our disguife. And what is it, but our thought and reflection, that can engage our secrecy in any instance that can ever be a proper check upon our difcourse-that enables us to distinguish what we may speak, and on what we ought to be filent? Do we cease to be in a condition to hide the deformities in ourselves, which we most wish to have concealed? On what point, then, is it likely that we should be reserved Whose secrets can he keep, who so foully betrays his own? It may, thirdly, be alledged against drunkenness, that it gives the crafty and knavish the most dangerous advantage over us. This vice puts us into the very circumstances, in which every one would with us to be, who had a view to impose upon us, to over-reach us, or in any way to gain his ends of us. When the repeated draught has difordered us, it is then, that only by complying with our humour, and joining, to appearance, in our madness, we may be deluded into measures the most prejudicial to us, into fuch as are our own and our families utter undoing. It is then that our purse is wholly at the mercy of our company; we spend we give-we lend-we lose. What unhappy marriages have been then concluded! What ruinous conveyances have been then made! How secure foever we may apprehend ourselves from impositions of so very pernicious a nature; yet more or fewer we must have to fear from drunkenness, as the opportunities, which it gives, will constantly be watched by all, who have any defign upon us: and if we are known frequently to diforder ourselves, all in our neighbourhood, or among our acquaintance, who are of any feriousness and decency, will be fure to avoid us, and leave us wholly to those, who find their account in afsociating with us; who, while they can make us their property, will be, as often as we please, our companions. A fourth argument against drunkenness is its bad effects upon our health. Every act of it is a fever for a time: and whence have we more reason to apprehend one of a longer continuance, and of the worft consequence? Our blood thus fired, none can be fure, when the disorder raised in it will be quieted, whether its inflammatory state will admit of a remedy: in several thousands it has been found incapable of any; and what has so frequently happened to others, may justly be confidered as likely to befal us. By the fame abfurd reliance on a good conftitution, through which they were deceived, we may be so likewife. But fuppofing the mere fever fit wearing off with the drunken one; how fatal would it prove to be then seized with a distemper of the infectious kind, that was at all malignant! This has often been the cafe; and when it has been so, the applications of the most skilful have been entirely vain. Let our intemperance have nothing instantly to dread; for how short a space can it be in such security? The young debauchee foon experiences the issue of his misconduct-foon finds his food disrelished, his stomach weakened, his strength decayed, his body wasted. In the flower of his youth, he often feels all the infirmities of extreme old age; and when not yet in the middle of human life, is got to the end of his own. If we have attained to manhood, to our full vigour, before we run into the excess, from which I am dissuading; we may, indeed, possibly be many years in breaking a good conftitution: but then, if a sudden ftroke dispatch us not; if we are not cut off without the least leisure given us to implore the mercy of heaven; to how much uneafiness are we, generally, refervedwhat a variety of painful distempers threaten us! All of them there is very little probability we should escape; and under which foever of them we may labour, we shall experience its cure hopeless, and its feverity the saddest lesson, how dear the purchase was of our former mirth. There are, I grant, instances, where a long-continued intemperance has not prevented the attainment of a very advanced age, free from diforders of every kind. But then it is to be confidered how rare thefe |