The company consists of eleven,[119] and on the chimney-piece, floor, and table, are three-and-twenty empty flasks. These, added to a bottle which the apothecary holds in his hand, prove that this select society have not lost a moment. The overflowing bowl, full goblets, and charged glasses, prove that they think "'tis too early to part," though the dial points to four in the morning! "What have we with day to do? Sons of Care, Sons of Care, 'twas made for you." The clock, like the company, is irregular; for the minute finger and hour hand do not agree. Over the chimney-piece is a picture, of which we can discover enough to guess that it has once been a landscape; but, like the understandings of the gentlemen present, is so obscured by smoke and vapour as to appear a mere chaos, without one clear and distinct form. The fumes of punch, the smoke of pipes, and effluvia of candles sunk into the sockets, must render the air delightfully balmy, and produce ambrosial fragrance. The different degrees of drunkenness are well discriminated, and its effects admirably described. The poor simpleton who is weeping out his woes to honest lawyer Kettleby, it makes mawkish; the beau it makes sick; and the politician it stupifies. One is excited to roaring, and another lulled to sleep. It half closes the eyes of justice, renders the footing of physic unsure, and lays prostrate the glory of his country and the pride of war. On the 22d of March 1742, for the benefit of Mr. Hippisley, was acted at Covent Garden Theatre a new scene, called _A Modern Midnight Conversation_, taken from Hogarth's print, in which was introduced Hippisley's Drunken Man, with a comic tale of what really passed between him and his old aunt, at her house on Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire. Having described the individuals of which this print is composed, let us for a moment reflect upon the vice it is intended to satirize; and considered in a moral point of view, it may have as good an effect as the sight of an intoxicated slave had upon the young men of Sparta. This people sometimes made a slave drunk, that their sons, disgusted by the sight, might avoid the practice.