turn cold and sleepy, and tumble in masses behind the hedges, and sleep off their drink, it may be in some cases at the expense of a rheumatic fever, or incipient consumption; and are perfectly unable to give any account of their proceedings at a future day. Indeed, the greater part may be respectable lads, who on no account would commit any such breach of the peace in their sober moments; nevertheless, scenes of this kind, coupled with the multiplicity of other usages, to which young men are necessarily liable in this country, induce among them general disregard of a character for sobriety, and in many cases lead to a recklessness of disposition, that is attended with effects in after life by no means desirable; but it is neither meant to assert that every individual launch-bowl frolic proceeds always to the above extremities, nor that all those engaged are to be held as inveterate offenders, for it is the usage, hitherto considered by all parties as irresistible, that has proved chiefly in fault.

Some years since, the insanity of such proceedings was brought before the parties concerned, in one of the buildingyards on the Frith of Clyde, and a reform proposed. It met, however, with a most determined opposition from the elder apprentices, in the hands of some of whom the money is, according to the rules of the usage, deposited, and who are the regulators of the revel; some of the younger lads, however, (stimulated perhaps in part by the circumstance that they could not afford dress to join the preliminary dance,) endeavoured to agitate the question. Hereupon the seniors issued an edict worthy of the Grand Turk, or of the Spanish Inquisition, viz., that whoever was heard to suggest any innovation on the usual launch-bowl procedure, should receive a very sufficient chastisement at the hands of the elder brethren. This was an obstruction which for a time proved effectual; the juniors were intimidated, and contented themselves with suppressed murmurs, in which they denominated their opponents "tories, and abettors of corruption." By and by, however, they plucked up courage, and renewed free talk upon the subject. In the mean time, the magistrates of the district issued a friendly notice to the inhabitants, recommending the abolition of certain drinking usages, of which one was the launch-bowl. Animated by this generous encouragement, the younger branches, who were by this time a considerable majority in number, provoked by former tyranny and oppression, proposed to have a regular fight for it; on the calculation, that though a junior could not individually duel his senior, yet,

that in a collective capacity it was evident they might settle the point by the arbitrement of war. Some wise heads among them, however, prevailed, and procured a more suitable way of determining the question, by convening a final meeting, where the abrogation of the drinking usage was resolved on by a large majority. A petition to the employers (into whose hands the new ship-owner's bounty had come) and a protest, was signed by the victors: the assistance of the masters to the new proposals was joyfully given; and the debate brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It is pleasing to know, that after matters had come to a certain height, several widowed mothers of the apprentices were emboldened to plead privately with the masters, that they would use all their influence in favour of the reform-such a step of interference they by no means dared openly to take. Thus this triumph was obtained by the perseverance of a few boys, against a long and formidable opposition, and with little assistance from any influential quarter, till the fate of the day had been in fact decided.

With regard to customs between females, the necessity of particular rules and occasions of drinking is roundly got the better of, by a general regulation, that whenever one female visits another, it is permitted and usual to bring out the wine or spirit bottle. A singular trait is observable when a wife goes for her husband to the public-house. The etiquette is, that she should be asked to taste; and if this be not performed, she is offended; or if, on the other hand, she will not deign to touch the liquid fire, the husband is entitled by rule to refuse to go home.

A country girl, servant in a family in a provincial town, left her place (although it was an agreeable one) to be near a sister, who was at service in a large city. She engaged as laundry-maid in a house where four female domestics were kept; and on the term-day was proceeding along the streets, when she overtook an acquaintance, who she knew to be on her way to service in the same house. On looking at the luggage of her companion, she perceived something uncommon among the parcels, to her of rather a suspicious appearance. "What's that?" says she, drawing forth a bottle from its hiding-place; "it's no whisky, surely!" "To be sure it is," retorted her friend; "and if you have not brought yours also, you will have but a cold reception from our new acquaintance.' Our heroine thought this was jest; but unacquainted with the drinking usages of her new situation, she was not long in discovering it to be earnest. At midnight, after the family had

retired to bed, the three other maids assembled in her apartment, the laundry, and produced the bottle in question, which they finished: the girl who slept with her having become sick in consequence, vomited all night. In an evening or two afterwards, the cook-maid's bottle was punished in a similar manner; and shortly after the third had been discussed, our heroine's was demanded as a sort of legal claim; she, however, was a girl of resolution, and declared her fixed determination by no means to comply. Immediately methods of disciplining the rebellious were put in force by the fellow-servants: they refused to help her in the washing for the family, told unfounded stories to her mistress; in short, managed to make her life so miserable as that in a fortnight she quitted her service, and went home to pass the time till the next term among her friends. Ninety-nine young women out of a hundred would have complied with the usage, at the risk of inebriation. If it is asked, Why do mistresses permit such doings? perhaps it may be answered, they know not the tithe of what is transacted below-stairs; but even if a mistress should remonstrate, it is not improbable that the imperative nature of the usage might be pleaded as a full excuse; and, moreover, that the lady-usage of the libation of brandied wines in the forenoon to visitors who have no plea of thirst or exhaustion, but in fact receive the liquor as a mere act of etiquette, would be hinted at as sufficient precedent to justify all the whiskycourtesies of maid-servants.

It is, in some towns, considered as extremely mean for a maid-servant to lay by her arles, or earnest-money: it must be spent in whisky. She has it in her option, however, to drink it with the servants of the house she has left, if she favours them, or with her other friends, if she prefers it. Twenty years ago, few women were so brazen-faced as to admit having been drunk on any occasion; at present, we are informed by a public prosecutor, that it is quite common for respectably dressed females to excuse their conduct, on trial, by pleading that they happened to be rather in liquor at the time the delinquency took place. It is notorious, that in great towns, and in the populous districts around, there are secret assemblies of females, instituted in revenge of their husbands' selfish-indulgences, for the purpose of the vilest excesses, out of the presence of men; which diabolical resorts have all their peculiar dark and hateful regulations. Town missionaries sometimes, in their researches among the abodes of sin, stumble unawares on these receptacles; for notwithstanding the back

wardness even of temperance advocates to speak out on this hideous state of things, the very general intemperance of females of the middle and lower ranks is a peculiar feature of the time in which we live; and the only safety of the country under this novel and unheard-of order of ruin and destruction, is to call out as with a trumpet. One day a gentleman visited a house in a particular lane in a large city; he found a woman prostrate on the floor, with her cap off, her hair dishevelled, a wretched naked infant sucking at her breast-she was literally dead drunk; her husband was sitting near with a group of his children, starving, for he had lost his day's work in remaining at home to keep the family; he seemed dejected even unto the grave, and at last burst into sobs, and declared the hopeless state of his affairs, almost every article of dress and furniture having been sold for drink. The staggering of females, under the guilty pressure of liquor, and the monstrous aggravation of visage, usual in this unparalleled exhibition of shame, is now not rare either in the streets or meadows of Scotland— a sight the most distressing and revolting, perhaps, that the eye of man can witness.

In some presbyteries, the presbyterial dinner is furnished with liquor, not by each member present paying his direct proportionate share, but by fines imposed on various occasions. When a clergyman gets a new manse, he is fined a bottle of wine; when he has been newly married, this circumstance subjects him to the same amicable penalty: a child also costs one bottle, and the publication of a sermon another. And as all ministers do not get manses, wives and children, or publish sermons, therefore in order to equalize matters, bachelors who have not been married after a certain interval, or those who in the marriage state have no family, or who do not get a new manse, and so forth, are all fated to be put into the list, and fined for omission, as others have been for commission; so that no man escapes. In short, many trivial circumstances are made the occasion of amercement for liquor; and a particular church-officer, unknown in primitive times, called the comptroller, is appointed to attend to this business, and so adjust the various mulcts, as to prevent one member from paying out of his course: and thus a suitable equality of contributions is preserved among all parties. Now, it is the method of all this to which we at present take leave to solicit the attention of the respectable class of men in question, because the industrious orders, hearing of these things, are thus led to connect certain circumstances with liquor, and are apt to

impose a fine of whisky at particular opportunities, in imitation of their religious instructors: thus adding another occasion where people are in some measure forced to liquor, by a rule unknown in most other countries, which exists besides, and independent of, the call of thirst, or other natural appetite.

The rule in most cases, among operatives, is a bottle of whisky for a daughter, and two for a son. But this is only the beginning of a debauch, which would not have obtained but for the usage. In a certain burgh, at the appointment of an elder as member of the general assembly of the kirk of Scotland, it is usual, I have been informed, for this church official to present the magistrates with two guineas to drink.

During the sitting of the assembly at Edinburgh in the month of May, if any clergyman of Edinburgh preach in his own pulpit, and thus fail to accept the assistance of a country brother to dispense the word of life, he thereby becomes liable in the fine of a bottle of wine to the presbytery.

A respectable individual thus writes me:-"A young woman was lately found lying in a state of brutal intoxication by a road side, with an infant of a few months old crying beside her. On inquiry, I found she had been sometime married to a sober, industrious tradesman, who stated that she had been several years servant to a clergyman who took toddy regularly after dinner, and she had been in the habit of draining the minister's tumbler, drinking the dregs while rinsing the glasses, by which means she had contracted a habit of drinking spirits at every opportunity." A kirk officer or beadle states, that it being his duty on Sundays to carry the Bible to and from the manse, on doing this he received his dinner and a glass of spirits at weddings he got always a glass or two; at all private baptisms spirits were given him; and at all funerals he got a glass. Had this worthy official been allowed to partake of the after-dinner toddy, of the Monday of the sacrament, of the spirits and water or wine of the clerical forenoon visits, and of some of the presbyterial fines, he might have been nearly on a par with the minister himself. I well remember, during the parliamentary investigation on drunkenness in 1834, the unfeigned amazement which some English senators expressed, when a Scotch witness declared that it was not unusual for clergymen in North Britain to drink ardent spirits. Lord Teignmouth says, "the minister of and his lady, waited breakfast at the manse, and expressed great surprise at my refusing to join them in the previous dram.' * Sketches of Scotland, 1836, p. 24. vol. ii.

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