Who ever heard of an Englishman sipping _eau sucrée_, and treating his friends to a glass of lemonade? Yet such things are common in France; and, of all the practices of that country, they are those most thoroughly visited by the contemptuous malisons of John Bull. It is a common belief that wine was the only inebriating liquor known to antiquity; but this is a mistake. Tacitus mentions the use of ale or beer as common among the Germans of his time. By the Egyptians, likewise, whose country was ill adapted to the cultivation of the grape, it was employed as a substitute for wine. Ale was common in the middle ages; and Mr. Park states that very good beer is made, by the usual process of brewing and malting, in the interior of Africa. The favourite drink of our Saxon ancestors was ale or mead. Those worshippers of Odin were so notoriously addicted to drunkenness, that it was regarded as honourable rather than otherwise; and the man who could withstand the greatest quantity was looked upon with admiration and respect: whence the drunken songs of the Scandinavian scalds; whence the glories of Valhalla, the fancied happiness of whose inhabitants consisted in quaffing draughts from the skulls of their enemies slain in battle. Even ardent spirit, which is generally supposed to be a modern discovery, existed from a very early period. It is said to have been first made by the Arabians in the middle ages, and in all likelihood may lay claim to a still remoter origin. Alcohol was known to the alchymists as early as the middle of the twelfth century, although the process of preparing it was by them, at that time, kept a profound secret. The spirituous liquor called arrack has been manufactured in the island of Java, as well as in the continent of Hindostan, from time immemorial. Brandy appears to have been known to Galen, who recommends it for the cure of voracious appetite;[2] and its distillation was common in Sicily at the commencement of the fourteenth century. As to wine, it was so common in ancient times as to have a tutelar god appropriated to it: Bacchus and his companion Silenus are as household words in the mouths of all, and constituted most important features of the heathen mythology. We have all heard of the Falernian and Campanian wines, and of the wines of Cyprus and Shiraz. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the ancients were in no respect inferior to the moderns in the excellence of their vinous liquors, whatever they may have been in the variety. Wine was so common in the eastern nations, that Mahomet, foreseeing the baleful effects of its propagation, forbade it to his followers, who, to compensate themselves, had recourse to opium. The Gothic or dark ages seem to have been those in which it was least common: in proof of this it may be mentioned, that in 1298 it was vended as a cordial by the English apothecaries. At the present day it is little drunk, except by the upper classes, in those countries which do not