It is a very humiliating reflection that eating and drinking occupy more of our thoughts than anything else in heaven above or in the earth beneath. We are not yet as the lilies that take no thought of such matters. Man is like the lower animals in this respect that with the vast majority of our race, the struggle for existence is a struggle for dinner. We have all somewhat of the Tartar Khan in us, and after we ourselves have dined, are ready to proclaim that the whole world may dine also. But we first. Nobody shall dine with our good will, if we are starving. Who can count all the wars, murders and quarrels that have arisen out of this one question of dinner—the question of questions? How many of the piteous cases that come before Sir Cresswell Cresswell are to be explained by deficiency of food, badness of cooking, and fits of indigestion? There is no such irritant as hunger and deranged gastronomy. If we could only get at the wisdom which is supposed to lie in ancient fables we should probably find that Pandora’s box, the source of every mischief, was an empty oven or larder, or some such receptacle. The poor man especially feels the truth of this doctrine. He conspires against the rich, because he never gets a dinner, and on that point he feels with the Great Cham. He beats his wife, because with his hard won earnings she can place only bad food before him. He drinks beer, and drowns himself in gin, because no meat that he can get is half so pleasant. People imagine that by introducing the light wines of France into this country we shall put a stop to drunkenness. It is a great mistake. The French are a sober people, not because they drink wine, but because they are good cooks. Where you have bad cookery and good liquor, depend upon it the liquor will carry the day. And we shall not stop the rage for liquor in this country by making it still better—by turning the gin into Cognac, and by turning the beer into Bordeaux. The cure lies rather in restoring the balance between meat and drink. Put the meat more on a par with the drink, and then see what the result will be. Either teach the poor man to cook, or give him his meat well cooked. Let the Temperance Leagues and Alliances look to it. They will accomplish far more good by improving the working man’s edibles than by meddling with his potables—by seconding that natural law which makes a man chiefly dependent on his food, rather than by attempting to place artificial barriers in the way of his getting whatever drink he may require. The best cure for the drunkenness of the lower classes is not a Maine Liquor Law—but soup and sausages, pudding and pies; is not to shut the beershops, but to open the poor man’s kitchen. Roundabout Papers.—No. IV. ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES. [Illustration]