Mr. David has since had a ‘serious call,’ He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all, And they say he is going to Exeter Hall To make a grand speech, and to preach, and to teach People that ‘they can’t brew their malt liquor too small.’ That an ancient Welsh Poet, one Pyndar ap Tudor, Was right in proclaiming ‘Ariston men Udor!’ Which Means ‘The pure Element is for Man’s belly meant!’ And that _Gin’s_ but a _Snare_ of Old Nick the deluder! Some of the finest writers of our time have exercised their pen in describing the horrors of intemperance. Charles Kingsley writes:-- Go, scented Belgravians, and see what London is. Look! there’s not a soul down that yard, but’s either beggar, drunkard, thief, or worse. Write anent that! Say how ye saw the mouth o’ Hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry--the Pawnbroker’s shop o’ one side, and the Gin-palace at the other--twa monstrous deevils, eating up men and women and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o’ the monsters, how they open and open and swallow in anither victim and anither. Write anent _that_!... Are not they a mair damnable, man-devouring Idol than ony red-hot statue of Moloch, or wicker Magog, wherein the auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at those bare-footed, bare-backed hizzies, with their arms round the men’s neck, and their mouths full o’ vitriol and beastly words! Look at that Irishman pouring the gin down the babbie’s throat! Look at that rough of a boy gaun out o’ the pawnshop, where he’s been pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning, into the ginshop, to buy beer poisoned wi’ grains of paradise and cocculus indicus, and salt, and a’ damnable, maddening, thirst-breeding, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in with a shawl on her back, and cam’ out without ane! Drunkards frae the breast!--harlots frae the cradle!--damned before they’re born![247] Mr. Ruskin has said that drunkenness is not only the cause of crime, but that it _is_ crime; and that if any encourage drunkenness for the sake of the profit derived from the sale of drink, they are guilty of a form of moral assassination as criminal as any that has ever been practised by the bravos of any country or of any age. Even Carlyle could doff his mannerism to state his conviction that gin is the most authentic incarnation of the infernal principle that is yet discovered. Cobden and Bright have hurled at the whole business their unmeasured anathemas.