TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE. In this plain text version of “The Art of Drinking”: Words in italics are marked with _underscores_. Small capital letters are shown in upper case. Minor printer's errors have been corrected, but variant and irregular spellings are retained. THE ART OF DRINKING. A HISTORICAL SKETCH. FROM THE GERMAN OF G. G. GERVINUS. TRANSLATED FOR THE UNITED STATES BREWERS’ ASSOCIATION. NEW YORK: UNITED STATES BREWERS’ ASSOCIATION. 1890. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. G. G. Gervinus (1805-1871) is recognized as one of the foremost historians of Germany. He was a man of marvelous erudition. His fame rests not only upon a great number of profoundly learned works, but also upon his brilliant advocacy of the constitutional rights of the people, as against the reactionary tendency of the German princes during Metternich’s despotic rule. He was one of the seven celebrated professors of the University of Göttingen who boldly protested against the violation of the Constitution by the King of Hanover. His best-known works are “History of the Poetical Literature of the Germans,” “History of the Nineteenth Century,” and a voluminous commentary on Shakspeare, “made popular in England”--as the Encyclopædia Britannica states--“by an excellent translation.” The following sketch was designed by Gervinus as an outline of what a history of potology would be, if conceived and executed by a philosophical mind. An English translation of this sketch needs no justification in our time. THE ART OF DRINKING. A HISTORICAL SKETCH. A sketch of the art of drinking might seem to announce a subject unworthy of a man whose energies have been devoted to earnest purposes and serious aims in life. But it is not my intention to make the sketch a mere treasure-box of all sorts of curiosities, nor to gratify thereby the curiosity of idle readers. When it is approached from a scientific standpoint, the dignity of science must necessarily exclude all frivolous treatment, as well as all shallow and superficial purpose. Many would be satisfied if an insignificant sketch of this kind simply bore some pathetic motto, as these words of Seneca’s: _Animum aliquando debemus relaxare et quibusdam oblectamentis reficere; sed ipsa oblectamenta opera sint._ I, however, would scorn a justification of this kind, for I hold that recreation ought to be recreation, and not work, and should consider it far better if our labors were pleasures, rather than our pleasures, labors. I wish in this sketch to point out the importance and serious significance of a work of this sort, and shall have, above all, to prove that the apparently somewhat jocular subject has a very serious side, and may be contemplated from a grave standpoint.