tion; such is the pathology of disease; and it is equally true that the circumstances we have named -expenditure beyond income-do in general constitute the precursors of embezzlement, forgery, etc. If people would but argue respecting sin as they do respecting everything else, how much crime would be avoided! "Have any of your theatrical or gambling acquaintances come to see you in Newgate ?" said I. "Well," said he, "I must own not one, and I take it exceedingly kind of you to do so, and shall read your book you may depend upon it," as I handed a copy of Doddridge's "Rise and Progress" to the warder for him, who sat in front of the bars like the keeper of a wild beast den. "But for the glee club, etc.," said I, "you would probably not have been here." He pressed his head against the bars, and gave me a look, as I turned away, such as I shall not readily forget. The last I heard respecting two other attendants at this club was their bankruptcy under, I fear, far from creditable circumstances. But the point under the particular head of this chapter to which I wish to draw especial attention is, that I am sorry to find the moderation of many of the members of that glee club has since merged into habitual and ruinous drunkenness. I met, some time since, one who, by his patrician politeness, obliging disposition, talents, and voice, was quite the soul of that club. He was in easy circumstances, and one of those men whose engaging demeanour makes them your friends at once. I should say in dress he was a model of neatness and gentility. How altered now! a haggard, careworn, dirty, threadbare drunkard stood before me, lounging along with one hand in his pocket. His moderate-very moderatedrinking of years had merged into disgusting habitual intemperance, and the steady hand that -but I forbear-could now develop could once that gift of beauty no more. His affairs had gone to wreck and ruin. Two others had become drunkards and madmen, and I could much enlarge, but space forbids. There was song: one who used to sing the wicked "Gaily now my moments roll, Whilst I quaff the flowing bowl; That deeply drinks of wine." Care reached his poor soul--he went mad, and died in the flower of his days. How true the lines of Prior: "Memory confused, and interrupted thought, Death's harbingers, lie latent in the draught, "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder," Prov. xxiii. 31, 32. In various instances murders have taken place upon my district through strong drink, not indeed with that rapidity to make the perpetrators amenable to the law, but various women have died so bruised that there could, I apprehend, be little doubt of their deaths having been much accelerated, and in several instances caused, by ill usage. Mutilation, broken limbs, etc., are of very common occurrence. Many very narrow escapes from instant destruction have taken place. I will mention one :— After a prayer meeting on my district I requested an aged friend to accompany me to an immoral house I was endeavouring to break upand shortly afterwards succeeded. The proprietors were persuaded to be lawfully married, and afterwards left the neighbourhood. On entering the court, we heard a furious altercation and struggling taking place in Mr. M.'s room. On entering, a very sad scene presented itself. Mr. M. was drawn up at one end of the room, and was livid with rage. Mrs. M. was drawn up at the other, the blood running down her face. Both thoroughly exhausted by fighting, were taking breath prepara tory to a fresh onset. Mr. M. was induced to accompany us to his father's, in Mrs. M. says, "I shall always consider you prevented mischief, maybe murder, by coming in just then, and God sent you, for I was looking for a knife just then; you know," said she, "my skull being fractured, I'm mad when I'm drunk." When sober, both are extremely quiet, inoffensive, and hard-working people. Court. It is admitted by Christians of all shades of doctrine, that mankind cannot always perform al! the wickedness they intend; but for this the world would long since have been an aceldama-my district more sanguinary than many localities. I can attribute the absence of hundreds of murders to nothing else than the providence and restraining hand of God amongst these people. Until the rise of the temperance movement, during the present century, the use of beer, or wines, or spirits, was considered as necessary to the maintenance of health and vigour as our daily food. Being partaken of as necessary diet, and presenting a marked and melancholy distinction in their action upon the human stomach to water, the natural beverage of man and other mammalia animals, as well as ALL animals of ALL orders, all existences with which we are acquainted, above, around, and in the waters under the earth, this has become the fruitful source of intemperance. A certain quantity of wholesome food, in general, stills the monitions of hunger, and more food then becomes repulsive to the stomach. But the action of alcohol is very different. As Dr. Johnson is recorded to have remarked to Mrs. Hannah More, when solicited to take a little wine after his dinner, "Ah child! I can't take a little." Not being a natural beverage, the human stomach does not instinctively furnish any sure monition when danger of intoxication is com mencing. The eating of two, or perhaps, by a hearty and healthy person, three slices of animal food, does not beget any desire for more; but in the mass of mankind, the action of alcohol upon the stomach is continually to induce desire for additional stimulus. Meat is not palatable after sufficient has been eaten, except in certain morbidly craving conditions of the stomach; but the appetite of the wine-bibber increases at every draught. Many uninformed minds, too, formerly were far from imagining even the excessive use of alcohol inimical to health. A publican who had, by excessive drinking, bloated his system to an enormous size, once declared to me I was entirely mistaken in my views: "what hurts people," said he, "is mixing their brandy with so much water; the water preys on the stomach. I," said he, "can drink twenty tumblers of brandy and water during the day, made stiff, but people have so much water mixed with the brandy that it naturally preys on their insides." Well has Milton said : |