formed a favourite addition to English drinks so early as the sixteenth century, and in the cups of sack and punch, brown toasts frequently floated at the top. In Wyther’s _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ (published 1618) mention is made, as has been already noticed, of a draught ‘that must be spiced with a nut-browne tost.’ Hall states that there were some who drank healths upon their knees; some put their own blood into their drink and then drank a health to the king. So that the young Hectors not only cultivated habits of barbarity, but also linked themselves with blasphemy. But there was one other way of drinking healths still to be told, a piece of unparalleled tomfoolery--that of toasting a lady in some nauseous decoction. When this fashion was popular, two students at Oxford were each enamoured of the reigning belle of that sober University, and, as a test of the relative depth of their devotion, they applied themselves to toasting her in the manner we have mentioned. One, determined to prove that his love did not stick at trifles, took a spoonful of soot, mixed it with his wine, and drank off the mixture. His companion, determined not to be outdone, brought from his closet a phial of ink, which he drank, exclaiming, ‘Io triumphe and Miss Molly.’ These crackbrained young men also esteemed it a great privilege to get possession of any great beauty’s shoe, in order that they might ladle wine out of a bowl down their throats with it, the while they drank to the ‘lady of little worth’ or the ‘light-heeled mistress’ who had been its former wearer. Is there any wonder that Dr. Peter Browne spoke out? He strongly condemned the practice on theological, moral, and common-sense grounds, of opinion that it had its origin in Pagan usages, though he is vague as to the particular custom out of which it arose. He classifies the various acceptations of a _health_ under six heads:--(1) When a curse or imprecation is intended upon the person drinking, or (2) upon any other person; (3) when one drinks in honourable remembrance of absent living friends; or (4) by way of wishing others health and prosperity; or (5) in token of our respect and good-will to another, or approbation of any affair; and (6) as an outward indication of our loyalty. All such health-drinking, the learned prelate urges, is incompatible with the duty of good Christians, whom he exhorts to suppress the practice. He also cites an interesting formula used by the Jews in drinking, which is the first instance, to my knowledge, of a curse being intended instead of an expression of good-will; the words, upon the authority of Buxtorf, meaning, in their ordinary signification, ‘much good may it do you;’ but the utterer thereof, by a kind of mental reservation or adaptation, implied a curse--nay, as many curses as the letters stand for, viz. 165.[210] From incidental notices we discover how very exceptional was the absence of toasts. Thus, in a description of home life at Badminton, we read:--