The effects of malt liquors on the body, if not so immediately rapid as those of ardent spirits, are more stupifying, more lasting, and less easily removed. The last are particularly prone to produce levity and mirth, but the first have a stunning influence upon the brain, and, in a short time, render dull and sluggish the gayest disposition. They also produce sickness and vomiting more readily than either spirits or wine. Both wine and malt liquors have a greater tendency to swell the body than ardent spirits. They form blood with greater rapidity, and are altogether more nourishing. The most dreadful effects, upon the whole, are brought on by spirits, but drunkenness from malt liquors is the most speedily fatal. The former break down the body by degrees; the latter operate by some instantaneous apoplexy or rapid inflammation. No one has ever given the respective characters of the malt-liquor and ardent-spirit drunkard with greater truth than Hogarth, in his Beer Alley and Gin Lane. The first is represented as plump, rubicund, and bloated; the second as pale, tottering, and emaciated, and dashed over with the aspect of blank despair. IV. _Modified by Opium._—The drunkenness produced by opium has also some characteristics which it is necessary to mention. The drug is principally employed by the Mahometans. By their religion, these people are forbidden the use of wine,[14] and use opium as a substitute. And a delightful substitute it is while the first excitation continues; for the images it occasions in the mind are more exquisite than any produced even by wine. There is reason to believe that the use of this medicine has, of late years, gained ground in Great Britain. We are told by the “English Opium-Eater,” whose powerful and interesting “Confessions” have excited so deep an interest, that the practice exists among the work people at Manchester. Many of our fashionable ladies have recourse to it when troubled with vapours, or low spirits: some of them even carry it about with them for the purpose. This practice is most pernicious, and no way different from that of drunkards, who swallow wine and other liquors to drive away care. While the first effects continue, the intended purpose is sufficiently gained, but the melancholy which follows is infinitely greater than can be compensated by the previous exhilaration.