Many might be profited by the resolute perusal of the ‘Confessions of an Opium Eater’ with self-application, for every habitual indulgence of appetite beyond what nature requires or will endure for the health of body or mind is a species of opium-eating. Such cordials, exhilaratives, and stimulants are generally, in the first instance, resorted to as lenitives of pain, reliefs from languor, or resources in idleness; they soon become necessary gratifications, affording little either of pleasure or of pain in the use (though non-indulgence is misery) till in the sequel they grow into tyrannous excesses that exhaust the animal spirits, debilitate the mind, and consume the frame with disease which no medicine can reach. The drunkard in this sense is an opium-eater; he puts an ‘enemy into his mouth that steals away his senses,’ and the fool’s paradise, into which liquor transports him, lies on ‘the broad way that leadeth to destruction.’ The snuff taker and the tobacco smoker in this sense are opium-eaters; these luxuries, as well as eating and drinking, may be enjoyed in moderation, but where does moderation end and abuse begin? That fine line of distinction was never yet traced with assurance, and the only safety lies many a league on the right side of it. The Indian weed may be less promptly deleterious than the Asiatic, but in this country it is scarcely a question that the former destroys more victims than the latter. Sydney Smith writes thus to Lady Holland, in 1828:-- Many thanks for your kind anxiety respecting my health. I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections: Holland House, past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks, and make greater exertions, without fatigue. My understanding is improved, and I comprehend political economy, I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or depress me. Pray leave off wine:--the stomach is quite at rest; no heartburn, no pain, no distention. In 1824 Carolina Nairne, _née_ Carolina Oliphant, became Baroness Nairne, her husband, Major Nairne, being restored to a barony granted to his family in the time of Charles I. She appears to be the first writer of a thorough teetotal song. It was entitled _Haud ye frae the cogie_.