Hogarth’s Gin Lane was advertised in 1751, with a note that, as its subject was calculated to reform some reigning vices peculiar to the lower class of people, in hopes to render them of more extensive use, the author had published them in the cheapest manner possible. “The cheapest manner possible” was one shilling which in those days was a fairly good price for a print. The following lame and defamatory verse was composed for the occasion by the Rev. James Townley:— “GIN LANE. Gin, cursed fiend, with fury fraught, Makes human race a prey; It enters by a deadly draught, And steals our life away. Virtue and Truth, driven to despair, Its rage compels to fly; But cherishes, with hellish care, Theft, murder, perjury. Damned cup, that on the vitals preys, That liquid fire contains; Which madness to the heart conveys, And rolls it through the veins.” Hogarth tells us that in Gin Lane every circumstance of the horrid effects of gin drinking is brought to view _in terrorem_. Idleness, poverty, misery, and distress, which drives even to madness and death, are the only objects that are to be seen; and not a house in tolerable condition but the pawnbrokers and gin shop. The same moral is taught by Cruikshank, but not before his conversion to teetotalism. Schiedam is the metropolis of gin, and its numerous distilleries are omnivorous, taking with equal relish cargoes of rye and buckwheat from Russia, and damaged rice or any cereal from other countries, and sometimes also potato spirit from Hamburg. The distillery of De Kuypers is probably that of the greatest note, and that firm’s black square bottles, packed in cases filled with hemp husks, are known all over the world. In Africa “square face” is king, but he frequently holds some counterfeit liquor, even sometimes the vilest of Cape Smoke. Schiedam is the Mecca of the Dutchman, the birthplace of his beloved Schnapps. This drink is always acceptable, and fifty good reasons exist for drinking it. The chief varieties of the aromatised popular spirit called gin are now known as Geneva, Hollands, and Schiedam. It is current in some parts of Africa as a species of coin. Since, however, every distiller varies his materials and their proportions, the species of this beverage are practically unlimited. Generally, however, the distinction is clear between Hollands or Dutch and English gin. The former is commonly purer than the highly flavoured and too frequently adulterated British product. The matters employed in the adulteration are very many. Corianders, crushed almond cake, angelica root powdered, liquorice, cardamoms, cassia, cinnamon, grains of paradise, and cayenne pepper, and many more substances take the place of the berries of the juniper tree. As these substances frequently produce a cloudy appearance, the liquid is subsequently refined by other adulterants, such as alum, sulphate of zinc, and acetate of lead.