injury done to the health of body and mind, through an indulgence in gluttony, and in the use of stimulating articles of various kinds, including brandy, table beer, cider, opium, tobacco and coffee?

Nobody in his senses will contend that this was the evil, against whose existence they arrayed themselves. They saw that a great public calamity, had overspread the whole land, that a PLAGUE had come upon our people, more terrible than all the plagues of Egypt; and like the wailing in that same land, when "the Lord smote all the first-born from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne, unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon," "they heard a great cry, such as there was none like it." They saw idleness and pauperism increasing with fearful rapidity in a new country; rich in fertility and full of resources. They saw our court houses thronged with culprits, and our county jails and state prisons crowded with miserable tenants. They saw strange fires burning on the altars of God. They saw age with his white locks and his tottering form, manhood in his fullest strength, youth in his freshest bloom, beauty in her sweetest charms, stricken down, together, by a spoiler more terrible than death. The father left his offspring to perish, and the mother forgot her nursing child.

And whence came these manifold forms of wretchedness and sin? Came they from the common violations of the Laws of Sobriety? Came they from gluttony, or from the influence of wine, or beer, or cider, or opium, or tobacco, or tea, or from all these? No! neither from one nor from all! They came from the stimulus of a more fiery drink, from a more potent poison, from a drug, which, while it consumed the body, brutalized also the mind; they came from Alcohol, distilled alcohol, and from this alone. They came from it then, they come from it

now.

The evils resulting from the use of distilled drinks differ, both in kind and degree, from those occasioned by any other inebriating or stimulating substance in nature. They stand in their enormity alone and unapproachable. This manifest and indisputable difference between the effects of alcohol on the one hand, and the exhilirating substances which have been enumerated, on the other, points out at once the necessary difference in the proper methods of removing their respective and appropriate ills. In the one case, I allude to wine, beer, cider, opium, tobacco, tea, coffee, and other similar articles, their peculiar properties should be pointed out, fully, honestly, faithfully, to each being adjudged its due share of good and its appropriate ills, for there is, in this respect, an enormous difference among them. People should know the effects which each of these articles produces on the human system. They should be made familiar with the Laws of Temperance in all their length and breadth; the health and happiness, the vigor of body, and the cheerful activity of mind which are the natural fruits of their observance; and the inevitable suffering attendant on their violation. The kindly voice of warning and admonition may urge never so warmly, the obligations, both of interest and duty, which bind men to obedience, to these divinely instituted laws, and there the matter should stop. If two or ten or a thousand individuals choose to associciate themselves together for mutual aid and instruction in the theory and practice of temperance and sobriety, certainly there can be no objection to it. It is more than unobjectionable; it is praiseworthy in the highest degree.

But this is far from being the case with distilled spirits. It is not enough, in relation to these, that we discuss their operation on the mind and body, that we assemble ourselves together to point out their disastrous effects on individual happiness and health, and that, for our own benefit, and for the well-being of others, we pledge ourselves to abstain wholly from their use. We have a right to adopt compulsory measures for the suppression of their manufacture, sale and use. The question with which they are concerned, is as much one of a public nature, one on which our national prosperity as much depends as that of our public schools, our laws, and the very form of our system of government. The general use of these drinks is as incompatible with our own liberty, and the safety of our persons and property, as would be the absence of all law, or the corruption of those who administer it. Men have the right, and it is a solemn duty which they owe to themselves, to their posterity, to their country, and to their God, to invoke the aid of legislative enactment, and, speaking through the mighty organ of the law, to say to their fellow men, "Touch not the unclean thing!" It is incompatible with my interest as well as yours, with my safety and welfare, and with the safety and welfare of my children, with the prosperity, perhaps with the very existence, of my country and her institutions, that you should be permitted to drink this beverage any longer, and you must not do it. We deprive you of the right.

I say, then, that in the enormity of the evils resulting from the unrestrained use of ardent spirits, in their fatal influence upon all our civil, social, and political blessings, in their general relation to pauperism and crime, corsists the essential and immense difference between them and all other substances. I insist upon this distinction. I believe it to be founded in truth, and that a correct understanding of it is all-important to the progress and ultimate victory of "the Temperance Cause."

If, by identifying our opposition to the use of distilled liquors, with opposition to all violations of the Laws of Temperance, the former can be made more speedily and entirely successful, then I have nothing to say. But if the distinction which I insist upon, is correct, this merging of opposition to alcohol, in general opposition to all stimulating and inebriating substances, is impracticable, and cannot be made without endangering or retarding the success of the Temperance cause, seems to me that among the friends of this great moral, social, civil, and national interest, there should be unity of design, singleness of purpose, harmony of operation.

It

Until, then, the use or wine, or beer, or tobacco, or tea, leads to the results produced by alcohol, they cannot properly be opposed on precisely the same grounds, nor with precisely the same weapons. And that these articles do not produce the same evils seems to me abundantly evident. A great deal has lately been said about wine, for instance, and some people denounce it as worse than alcohol. I have been in the habit of saying annually, for some time past, that I think its habitual use a great evil, that it is unfriendly to the full health of the body, and to the active, well-balanced play of the mind, and this, especially, in the case of young people. It has been my duty to lecture upon it as an important article of medicine. It was formerly much used in the treatment of indigestion. I have uniformly stated it as my opinion,

that it made ten dyspeptics where it had cured one; the relation of forty to one, would probably be nearer the truth."

We should not quote so largely if we knew of any other way by which to express our own ideas equally well. We do not indeed subscribe to what is said of the right to use compulsory means, or in other words, "invoke the aid of legislative enactment," for the suppression of the manufacture, sale, and use of distilled spirits. Whether the right exists or not, we doubt whether good would result from its being used. At any rate, we do not discuss the question at present. But the marked distinction which is maintained between the use of distilled spirits and all other infringements of the laws of Temperance, we cordially approve. It seems to us injudicious for the Temperance Society, to interfere with the use of Wine, Tobacco, Opium, Tea, Coffee, &c. The proper enemy of the Temperance Society, as such, is Alcohol, in that form called ardent spirits; and by substituting for the pledge to abstain from ardent spirits, a pledge to use no stimulating drink, we think that this society, not only has brought upon itself unnecessary odium and ridicule, but has meddled with things altogether out of its legitimate sphere of action. We say this, not because we like the use of wine or tobacco; we are sure that the latter is hurtful, and the former in the impure mixtures which we get in this country, is by no means beneficial; but one thing at a time. To put out of use all kinds of stimulants, is both impossible and undesirable; our work as Temperance men is, to drive distilled liquors from our community, and this work alone is more than enough for one generation.

Our author after speaking of the common effects of wine, opium, and tobacco, and drawing one or two additional distinctions between them and distilled spirits, goes on to say:

"I conclude this part of my subject with the earnest exhortation, to the members of the Society whom I have the pleasure to address, to persevere with unwavering constancy in the maintenance of their principles, and in the prosecution of their designs. As individuals, join as many total abstinence associations as you please, whether they be partially, totally, or wholly so; adopt for yourselves as high a standard, prescribe for your government as pure and perfect a code of sobriety as you choose, and urge the same conduct and principles, as zealously as you like, upon your friends and the public; but as a Society engaged in the great Temperance Reform, in a specific measure of special, immediate and pressing exigency, in the removal of an evil, the heaviest that ever fell on the christian world-adhere to the original and chief, and sole purpose of your fathers in the cause, go on with a resolution,

so fixed and determinale, as neither to be baffled by difficulties nor distracted by an attention to minor evils, suffer not your operations to be enfeebled by any "entangling alliances," and, with the smile of Heaven on your exertions, you have nothing to fear."

By attending to this exhortation, especially while our Temperance Societies are, as at present, but an experiment, at which men look with a sort of suspicion, we shall do a vast deal to secure the ultimate success of our efforts.

Although we have already quoted more than a fair proportion of the little pamphlet before us, we ask yet further indulgence. The Temperance reformation, if it goes on, must be the result, in a great degree, of the example of Individuals. This is not felt among us as it should be, and our last quotation is to this point.

"The influence of a man's daily walk and conversation, is acting constantly and in spite of himself. We can no more escape from it, and from its responsibilities, than we can from the sustaining pressure of the super-incumbent and surrounding atmosphere. It is always flowing from us; in all places, and at all times, and alike constantly whether it be good or bad. The steaming and putrid sources of contagion can no more hold back their pestilential emanations, than can the pure fountain of light and heat arrest the outgoings of its own vivifying beams.

This influence is as inseparably connected with the humblest as with the most exalted individual. . Besides, there is this most interesting consideration; such is the arrangement of the social system, the members of the human family are so bound. together, they are connected by such various ties, and such multiform relations, that almost every individual exerts a more powerful influence on certain other individuals than does any one else. And however trifling the direct and immediate results of this influence may sometimes seem, no one can, even in a given instance, fix the boundaries or limit the extent of its possible agency. It may perish in its beginnings, and it may, also, go forth with a constantly widening.range, and a constantly accumulating power of action. A single word may transmit its undying and inextinguishable influence through thousands and tens of thousands of human bosoms, carrying along with it, like a benignant star, purity and light; or darkening and staining the hearts through which it passes, with wretchedness and sin. These and similar considerations may help us to feel more sensibly the immense responsibility which is perpetually upon us. And they are of most emphatic interest to us, as Young Men, and in relation to the subject of temperance. Youth is the season of confidence and trust, when the first permanent friendships are established, and the first lasting form and pressure are given to the character. There are but few, probably, who have passed through this period of life, who have not been placed in such connexion with some one associate as has put his destiny, to a certain extent, into their keeping.

Is it possible to give to this subject a more serious and imposing aspect than really belongs to it? What must be the sensations of that man, who beholds some bosom friend, the companion of his early and

innocent days, the playmate of his childhood, perishing in the haunts of the drunkard; where his hand had led him? The spectacle would haunt him like the shadowy spectre of a murdered friend, and the despairing cry of the sufferer, calling on his destroyer for help when there was no help, would ring through his soul like a wail from the spirits of the lost, forever and ever."

ART. V.-AUTHORSHIP.

THERE never was a period, in English Literary History, which equalled the present in fecundity. Of the four rules laid down by Sterne, the practice of one of which he humorously adjudged necessary to the establishment of the fact of manhood, the third is the favored one, and, accordingly, men seem reluctant to die without having written a book. Fashion, whose mandates are so generally ridiculous, has prescribed a rule to the lovers of authorship, to transcend which would be fatal to the hopes of a fashionable author. An author must confine his lucubrations, on one subject, within two volumes, if he wishes to be read. Our novelists are scrupulous in writing up to the fashionable standard, and are careful not to exceed it. Nothing could be more out of taste, or more ill-timed, than the production of a folio at present. The age of folios is numbered with the past. Indeed, we have but little love for those formidable volumes which, a couple of centuries since, were the pride of authors, seeing that they were the embryos of modern encyclopædias; and contained treatises on every subject which human ingenuity could assimilate with the main one considered.

In authorship, as in every other department of human exertion, men manifest great differences in the facility with which they execute their intentions. With some writers, the stream of thought, as Johnson observed of Burke's mind, is perennial-whether the waters be sapid or tasteless. These are the authors who ask, with Byron, for a hero, or with Swift, for a subject; for one or the other of these desiderata being obtained, a book is forthwith the result. With others, again, the business of authorship proves a labor, and they realize the beau ideal of Pope, and,

Strain from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.