other variety, are preserved in existence by its agency. We find that it has been necessary to existence in all ages and in all climes, and to people of every tribe and country-to the untutored savage and the polished Athenian; and its value and importance is undiminished at the present time.

The

Our space will not allow us to particularize on this subject, or we could show that the inhabitants of those ancient nations which cease to exist only in the classic page, used water as a beverage. The Ethiopians, the ancient Romans, the Chaldeans, were water-drinkers. Abraliam dismissed Hagar with a bottle of water, and when the contents of her bottle was exhausted, we find the Angel of the Lord directing her to a well of water. Sampson, alter he had accomplished the destruction of his enemies, refreshed himself with water. Israelites, when travelling through the desert, were supplied with water. David's soldiers procured water for him at the risk of their lives from a well possessed by his enemies. The sons of Rechab were water-drinkers, in obedience to the commands of Rechab, their father; and as a reward for their integrity and obedience, God declared they should not want a man to stand before him for ever. We find, by the testimony of that celebrated Oriental traveller, Dr. Wolf, that they still exist a separate and numerous body, observing the same customs and practices.

The ancient Britons were water-drinkers, and we read that they were fine, athletic men, celebrated for their agility and strength, capable of enduring hunger, cold, and fatigue and expo ure to the inclemency of the weather.

The Rev. Mr. Morton, a missionary from India, speaking of the people of India in the present day, says, that if we except one milli n of Europeans, the 150 or 160 millions of inhabitants of India were persons who never drank anything stronger than water; and a finer set of men, both in body and mind, than the natives were, did not exist upon earth. Mr. Buckingham says, the wrestlers and quot players of Upper Hindestan are among the most powerful and muscular men he had ever seen, and before whom the strongest European would quail; yet these persons drank nothing stronger than water. In Turkey, Persia and Samarcand, the same practice prevails; the sepoys of India drink nothing stronger than water, and yet they travel twenty or thirty miles per day, and feel very little fatigue. Mr. Buckingham, himself, rode 800 miles in ten successive days, with the thermometer at 1250 in some parts of the journey, and below freezing point in others, and drank nothing but water. Dr. Jackson says, he travelled in Jamaica on foot 118 miles in feur days, and carried baggage equal to the knapsack of a common soldier, and drank only tea, water, or lemonade; and at an advanced age, declared he had worn out three armies, and was able, as far as health and strength was concerned, to wear out three move. He attributed his escape from those fierce diseases, by which he was surrounded when engaged in his professional duties, to his entire abstinence. The natives of the Himalaya mountains are reported to be equal in strength to three British soldiers, and they are water drinkers.

We have, too, the opinions of inany of the most celebrated medical men in the world, Boaerhave, Dr. Hoffman, Zimmerman, Dr. Gregory, Dr. Cheyne, Dr. Sanders, Dr. Hufeman, Duncan, and many others in favour of water drinking. We do not expect, however, to see every abstainer become a water-drinker, and as there are other beverages which may be used consistently with the principles of temperance,

and which do not appear to have a tendency to shorten life, we do not object to their use; but it is very evident that the more we adhere to the laws of nature, the more likely we are to enjoy a long life in the possession of health and strength.

In illustration of our remark, we give the case of a woman whose maiden name was Marian Morrison, who has attained the very extraordinary age of one hundred and eight years, in the full possession of her faculties, and is now living at the sound of Scalpa Harris. Her age in December 1848, was one hundred and seven years, yet she retains all her faculties as entire as ever; she hears and sees as well as in her youth, and can travel on a plain road ten miles in a day without being fatigued; she never used any spectacles, and she can knit and darn without them. She had a family of seven children, three sons and two daughters of whom are yet alive; the youngest, Kenneth Macaskill, is fifty-nine years of age, and is a stout, strong boned man, and intelligent; about six feet two inches high. When giving this sketch of his mother, he said that she had paid rents to seven proprietors on the Harris estate, and that when he left home on the twenty-third of July, he left her grinding meal in a hand mill, or quern, as it is called in the Highlands. She had never suffered from rheumatism or any chronic disease. She was not fond of dainty food, and had not indulged in ardent spirits, or weak dituted liquors, but lived on good wholesome Highland fare. And there died very recently at Bothwell, aged upwards of ninety, Janet Sutherland, a native of John-O-Groat's, who, during her long life, never tasted wine or spirits, nor anything stronger than tea or coffee; she used no salt, pepper nor mustard, and had never known sickness. On her death bed she had not a struggle, and died without the slightest pain. She taught a school until within the last year of her life.

Instances could be multiplied to prove that those who have lived to extreme old age in the enjoyment of their faculties, are those who have lived strictly temperate, and free from unnatural excitement. We sometimes see persons whose lives have been the very opposite of this, live to old age; but mark the contrast-their declining life is marked with imbecility and second childhood; their palsied limbs with difficulty support theiremaciated bodies; whilst their whole system is racked and tortured with excruciating pains, and they look forward, with alternate hopes and fears, to that period when they shall be permitted to "shuffle off this mortal coil," instead of being surrounded with that dignity which attaches itself to honourable o'd age.

Not only is abstinence from alcoholic liquors calculated to prolong life, but it actually enables us to perform the labours and duties of active life with more ease and satisfaction to ourselves and our employers. In proof of our assertion, we may mention a fact stated in a work recently published, A Tour through the United States of America, by Archibald Prentice, in which he states that, during a tour of 3,000 miles, and dining, on an average, five days in the week at hotels or other houses of accommodation, he very rarely saw wine at table; and at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, there were not above one in ten that drank iced champagne-a drink considered so very agreeable in the summer season. During the whole journey, he only saw one bottle of malt liquor, and not a single glass of spirits; and in those hotels where spirits were sold, the bar was removed to some obscure part of the house, as if to avoid offence to their respectable visitors. He says, that he ascertained that, by the middle and upper classes, the practice was considered as vulgar, immoral, and

injurious to health, and by working men as disreputable. His own experience, he states, convinced him that he was better able to endure the fatigue of travelling and the heat of the country, without its use. It must be very evident, therefore, that amongst such a great number of persons as he was necessarily brought in contact with, there was also a great difference in their engagements and employments; and we naturally arrive at the conclusion that they would not abstain, if abstaining incapacitated them for these engagements. This granted, we presume that they were better able to perform these duties.

To return to our country, we feel much pleasure in stating that in Devonshire, a great cider-making county, a large quantity of prime cider was sold by auction at fifteen shillings the hogshead, about half its usual price, in consequence of its being so little in request.

To come nearer still to the question of labour without its use-the chemist and physiologist inform us that there is nothing in alcoholic drinks which contribute to the formation of bone or muscle, neither does it afford mental energy; it stimulates, but stimulation is not strength. Nourishing food, on the contrary, afford all these. Had we been destitute of any other proof, the experiment of Dr. Beddoes with the anchor-smiths ought for ever to have set the question at rest; but happily for the cause of total abstinence, instead of resting on one isolated experiment, the evidence which could be adduced to prove that man is capable of performing all kinds of physical labour without its use, would be voluminous. Examples could be selected from every grade and class-from the monarch to the peasant; from the statesman, the lawyer, the minister, the student, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the agriculturist; but as it is more especially with the working classes we have to consider its adaptation, we shall proceed to produce some evidence to that effect.

We have at the present time in our view blacksmiths, navigators, butchers, postmen, coachmen, tailors, shoemakers, labourers, leatherdressers, stainers, with men of every trade and profession-sedentary and active-many of them we have known as staunch adherents to the cause, and have heard them declare, both in public and private, that they could not only perform their respective duties as well, but much better. We have been accustomed, for a period of twenty-four years, to work from twelve to fifteen hours per day, and frequently longer, in the polluted atmosphere of crowded and ill-ventilated shops; eight years of this period we have been abstainers, and have invariably found that we have not experienced that lassitude and depression of spirits which we did before we became total abstainers. Our experience corresponds with that of many more with whom we are personally acquainted; and daily experiences convince us that we not only feel more comfortable in mind and body, but are able to accomplish a greater amount of labour.

We never yet heard any man affirm, that had tried the principle of total abstinence, that it incapacitated him for labour. At a late meeting of the Chelmsford Total Abstinence Society, Mr. James Christy stated, that, for nine years he had been a teetotaler, during which time he had been largely engaged in farming with his son (he farmed one thousand acres), and also in brick making; he had seen men who, in the harvest field, the barn, and the brick yard, could perform their work as well, if not better, without intoxicating drinks.

The following is the testimony of the teetotal workmen at Nos. 1 and 3 Rail Mills, Pentrebach, and of those that work in the forges :

66 ***, Bogsity 47 at weany of us have been in the La' it of using intoxiCin: Borbely years wine employed in the inn works; that ⚫ a nba cnd act d on the principle of total abstinence fram au inx ng draks, and we give our mest candid opinion, from perional experience, that we have felt no inconvenience in the perfolien e of Car work, or 1ss of heth, by abandoning the druallard's dink, but, on the contrary, have been better able to attend to our o des; while we can endure more fatigue and toil, both by day oni nizut, and are in every respect more happy in mind, healthy is constitution, and comfortable in circumstances, than when we sent our money in public hou-es. This is the declaration we make before the war, conscious of the advantages resulting from the adoption of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors and beverages, and we s ni this testimony in the hope it may induce thousands of our fellow workmen, and all who are in the habit of taking this poison, to adopt the same principle and practice as

our ves."

We could produce evidence similar to this from persons engaged in almost every trade and profession in this country, did our space permit. It is a well-attested fact that, on one or two occasions, our trops in India were, from necessity, obliged to take long marches without their usual allowance of spirits; the result was, that those mrches were accomplished with less fatigue and less sickness than on ordinary occasions.

To those who are sceptical on the subject, we would point to the vast number of ships that traverse the mighty ocean without any kind of liquors, except a little in the medicine chest. We can give, too, the testimony of Captains Ross and Parry, and the Rev. Mr. Scoresby. They state that the men accompanying them in their various expeditions performed their duty better, and were preserved in health in those frozen regions which they visited, in consequence of abstaining from intoxicating liquors. Sir John Richardson says he is quite sati fied that spirituous liquors, though they give a temporary stimulus, diminish the power of resisting cold. IIe states that they found on their northern journey that tea was far more refreshing than wine or spirits, which they soon censed to care for, while the craving for tea increased. He says, likewise, that the Hud-on Bay Company have, for many years, excluded spirits entirely from the fur counties to the north over which they have exclusive control, to the great improvement of the health and morals of their Canadian servants and of the Indian tribes.

We will conclude this subject with giving a very interesting extrict of a statement made to the meeting of the British Association at Card f, in a letter from a mail coachman. He says:-"It is quite a mistake for a man to think he requires a glass of ale, wine, or spirits while he is travelling, or exposed to the inclemency of the weather. I speak from experience and I think you will allow my authority to be good, when I tell you it is the result of an experience of twenty-seven years' exp sure to all kinds of weather, and that, during that time, as a servant of the public, I have never been out of employment one minute. I have driven on several roads out of London and in the provinces, but was never out of a situation, a'ways having a coach to go to before my previous engagement terminated. During that priod I have driven à distance equal to more than twenty times round the globe which we inhabit, allowing its circumference to be 25,000 miles. My present appointment is seventy-four miles per day,

or 27,010 miles per year; and during the last fourteen months, with the exception of my having been subponed in Bristol in October last, on a trial to prove an alibi, I have never been one day off the box of the mail, Sundays not excepted; and I have been through some very severe weather last winter, yet I never have had recourse to stimulants of any kind, showing clearly, that a person in health does not require them. Now, I will tell you my habits for the last fourteen months, and their result. I rise regularly without being called, about six, a.m., and immediately have a cold bath, dress, read three quarters of an hour, and prayers; breakfast, which con ists of a small basin of bread and milk; am at my duties at the coach office at eight o'clock; go 74 miles, all weather, without taking anything whatever; return at five o'clock, p.m. At half-past five o'clock, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I partake of meat for dinner, roast or boiled mutton, potatoes, or bread, and about half a glass of water, always leaving off when I could eat half as much again; and in the evening of those days, at nine o'clock, I take a slice of bread and butter. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays I do not eat meat, but take tea and dry toast for my dinner; the evenings as before, and go to bed regularly at ten o'clock. The result of such extreme regularity of dietary habits and rest I find to be conducive to health, and I have no doubt it would he so to others."

Some years ago when he was in the company of several coachmen, they affirmed that no one could drive a coach, and properly attend to his business, on less than two glasses of brandy and water per day. That very evening he dropped Is. 6d. into the box, and said, "There goes two glasses of brandy and water;" and with this morey, which he dropped in every night regularly, he paid the insurance on his life for £1000. After a while a bonus was granted, which reduced his payment, and it is now but 1s. a day. Thus he has secured a competence to his family in case of death; besides this, he has been enabled to send four of his children to a boarding school, that they may enjoy the inestimable advantages of a good education; he keeps a regular journal of each day, and stands at the head of his profes

sion.

How much better is it to make this use of his money, than for a man to spend it in making himself more or less drunk, which is the case with many a coachman, who becomes a pauper as soon loses his employment.

as he

CHAPTER II.

A writer, whose name is unknown to us, makes the following beautiful remarks:-"Perhaps," he says, "there is nothing more terrible to contemplate than the ruin of the mind. Time with his passing wing may smite cathedrals and castles, and leave buttress and battlement clad in a shroud of living green: but when it passes over an immortal mind, the desolation is fearful. Indeed, pilgrims flock to ruins as to a "thing of beauty;" but the visitor to one who suffers under the calamity of insanity, gazes and shudders. Nothing of the picturesque gladdens his eye; he only beholds death in life, and life in death."

In this chapter we proceed to show the effects of intemperance as it operates on the mind and actions of mankind.

We will briefly glance at the high origin and exalted position of