Since, also, however vulgarly the Grindles may put it, it is true that drunkenness _is_ the agony of wives, the dread of mothers,--that it does destroy hopes, desolate hearths, break hearts,--that within the last two years it has added to its terrible deeds wide disasters to our arms, long sorrow to our country, and fruitless death in a thousand households,--we think it would have been well, if the discredit cast upon temperance measures, and the discomfiture visited upon its advocates, had been accompanied by a less covert recognition of the evil and by a more obvious sympathy with its victims. Since the methods taken to insure self-control are insufficient, would it not have been possible to indicate better? Since Woodbury does not think abstinence to be the cure of intemperance, could he not justify his practice by a higher principle than self-indulgence, lay it on a deeper foundation than dilettanteism? We regret, also, that in a book by Bayard Taylor there should have been found room for such a paragraph as this:-- "The churches in the village undertook their periodical 'revivals,' which absorbed the interest of the community while they lasted. It was not the usual season in Ptolemy for such agitations of the religious atmosphere,--but the Methodist clergyman, a very zealous and impassioned speaker, having initiated the movement with great success, the other sects became alarmed lest he should sweep all the repentant sinners of the place into his own fold. As soon as they could obtain help from Tiberius, the Baptists followed, and the Rev. Lemuel Styles was constrained to do likewise. For a few days the latter regained the ground he had lost, and seemed about to distance his competitors. Luckily for him,... the material for conversion, drawn upon from so many different quarters, was soon exhausted; but the rival churches stoutly held out, until convinced that neither had any further advantage to gain over the other."