_Burials_ were imperfect without the cup. M. Misson, in his _Observations_, notes:-- Butler, the keeper of the Crown and Sceptre Tavern in St. Martin’s Lane, told me that there was a tun of red port drunk at his wife’s burial, besides mulled white wine.--No men ever go to women’s burials, nor women to men’s, so that there were none but women at the drinking of Butler’s wine. Such women in England will hold it out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well as upon the other occasion, and battle infinitely better than they. The number of _public-houses_ was excessive. In 1725 a report from a committee of Middlesex magistrates stated that at that period there were in the metropolis, exclusive of the City of London and Southwark, 6,187 houses and shops wherein ‘geneva, or other strong waters,’ were sold by retail. The population was then about 700,000. In some cases every seventh house was employed in the sale of intoxicants. We get a life-like picture of the times from Daniel Defoe; and if it be objected that his writing is fiction, we reply with Thackeray that the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. On the subject of drink amongst _women_, and drink as a medicine, what can be more touching than the following from his _Life of Colonel Jack_?-- The hero, Colonel Jack, is giving an account of his third wife:-- I was infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was, indeed, the best-humoured woman in the world, and a most accomplished beautiful creature--indeed, perfectly well bred, and had not one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without the least interruption for about six years. But I at last had a disappointment of the worst sort even here. She caught cold, and grew very sickly. In being so continually ill and out of order, she very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors. Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, goes on by little and little to their destruction; so in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that--till, in short, she could not live without them; and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking. As I likened drink to the devil in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. In short, my beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife, grew a beast, a slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table, nay, in her own closet by herself, till she lost her beauty, her shape, her manners, and at last her virtue.