if I could find any thing more pure, or less pernicious, to quench my thirst; but, although the natural springs of excellent water are seen gushing spontaneous on every side, from the hills that surround us, the inhabitants, in general, make use of well-water, so impregnated with nitre, or alum, or some other villainous mineral, that it is equally ungrateful to the taste, and mischievous to the constitution. It must be owned, indeed, that here, in Milsham-street, we have a precarious and scanty supply from the hill; which is collected in an open bason in the Circus, liable to be defiled with dead dogs, cats, rats, and every species of nastiness, which the rascally populace may throw into it, from mere wantonness and brutality. Well, there is no nation that drinks so hoggishly as the English. What passes for wine among us, is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; and yet we, and our forefathers, are and have been poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour--The only genuine and wholesome beveridge in England, is London porter, and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cyder and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species--But what have I to do with the human species? except a very few friends, I care not if the whole was--. Heark ye, Lewis, my misanthropy increases every day--The longer I live, I find the folly and the fraud of mankind grow more and more intolerable--I wish I had not come from Brambletonhall; after having lived in solitude so long, I cannot bear the hurry and impertinence of the multitude; besides, every thing is sophisticated in these crowded places. Snares are laid for our lives in every thing we eat or drink: the very air we breathe, is loaded with contagion. We cannot even sleep, without risque of infection. I say, infection--This place is the rendezvous of the diseased--You won’t deny, that many diseases are infectious; even the consumption itself, is highly infectious. When a person dies of it in Italy, the bed and bedding are destroyed; the other furniture is exposed to the weather and the apartment white-washed, before it is occupied by any other living soul. You’ll allow, that nothing receives infection sooner, or retains it longer, than blankets, feather-beds, and matrasses--‘Sdeath! how do I know what miserable objects have been stewing in the bed where I now lie!--I wonder, Dick, you did not put me in mind of sending for my own matrasses--But, if I had not been an ass, I should not have needed a remembrancer--There is always some plaguy reflection that rises up in judgment against me, and ruffles my spirits--Therefore, let us change the subject.