naturally furnish the grape. In those that do, it is so cheap as to come within the reach of even the lowest.[3] In speaking of drunkenness, it is impossible not to be struck with the physical and moral degradation which it has spread over the world. Wherever intoxicating liquors become general, morality has been found on the decline. They seem to act like the simoom of the desert, and scatter destruction and misery around their path. The ruin of Rome was owing to luxury, of which indulgence in wine was the principal ingredient. Hannibal’s army fell less by the arms of Scipio than by the wines of Capua; and the inebriated hero of Macedon, after slaying his friend Clytus, and burning the palace of Persepolis, expired at last of a fit of intoxication, in his thirty-third year. A volume might be written in illustration of the evil effects of dissipation; but this is unnecessary to those who look carefully around them, and more especially to those who are conversant with the history of mankind. At the same time, when we speak of drunkenness as occurring in antiquity, it is proper to remark, that there were certain countries in which it was viewed in a much more dishonourable light than by any modern nation. The Nervii refused to drink wine, alleging that it made them cowardly and effeminate: these simple people had no idea of what by our seamen is called _Dutch courage_; they did not feel the necessity of elevating their native valour by an artificial excitement. The ancient Spartans held ebriety in such abhorrence, that, with a view to inspire the rising generation with a due contempt of the vice, it was customary to intoxicate the slaves and exhibit them publicly in this degraded condition. By the Indians, drunkenness is looked upon as a species of insanity; and, in their language, the word _ramgam_, signifying a drunkard, signifies also a madman. Both the ancients and moderns could jest as well as moralize upon this subject. “There hangs a bottle of wine,” was the derisive exclamation of the Roman soldiery, as they pointed to the body of the drunken Bonosus, who, in a fit of despair, suspended himself upon a tree. “If you wish to have a shoe of durable materials,” exclaims the facetious Matthew Langsberg, “you should make the upper leather of the mouth of a hard drinker—for that never lets in water.”