Ale-houses are ever an occasion of debauchery and excess, and either in a religious or political light it would be our highest interest to have the greatest part of them suppressed. They should be put under laws of not continuing open beyond a certain hour, and harbouring only proper persons. These rules, it may be said, will diminish the necessary taxes; but this is false reasoning, since what was consumed in debauchery abroad would, if such a regulation took place, be more justly and perhaps more equitably for the workman’s family spent at home: and this, cheaper to them and without loss of time. On the other hand, our ale-houses, being ever open, interrupt business. This same delightful author wrote that convivial satire entitled _The Three Pigeons_, which he put into the mouth of Tony Lumpkin in _She Stoops to Conquer_, of which the following is a part:-- Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain With grammar, and nonsense, and learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives _genus_ a better discerning. When Methodist preachers come down, A-preaching that drinking is sinful, I’ll wager the rascals a crown, They always preach best with a skin-full. Then come, put the jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout, Here’s the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever! Shenstone, another contemporary poet, though he spent so large a portion of his time in adorning The Leasowes, till he had made it a kind of rural paradise, could also rave about the _freedom_ of an _inn_:-- ‘Tis here with boundless power I reign, And every health which I begin Converts dull port to bright champagne; Such freedom crowns it at an inn. Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn. And the same spirit breathes again in the _Deserted Village_ of Goldsmith. The village ale-house is clearly included among the ‘simple blessings of the lowly train.’ Yet there is nothing to condemn in the sentiments there expressed, and we may echo the words of Sir Walter Scott:-- The wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice; and he accomplished his task in a manner which raises him to the highest rank among British authors. But we pass on to notice the man who did more than any one of his time to expose vice, and in particular the vice of intemperance. And this is not surprising when we consider the remarkable manner in which his genius for painting discovered itself.