Little need be said of the drinking habits of the modern Jews. They are notoriously a sober race both in England and elsewhere, and their temperance is due mainly to two causes. First, they are a small community, and their partial isolation from the other religious denominations has a tendency to make them careful of their morals. The most important reason, however, is that they do not follow any avocations which necessitate great physical exertions. Thus we seldom find them working as artisans or day-labourers; so that there is no great bodily waste to be repaired; and they are, moreover, removed from the temptations to excessive drinking to which the great mass of our working population is exposed. Amongst Jews of the middle classes there is more intemperance. They mix more freely with Christians, and their long fasts are not unfrequently followed by a degree of self-indulgence which, many will think, deprives some of their old religious observances of any merit that they may possess. As already remarked, however, as a whole the Jews are a sober and exemplary race, whose habits in that respect are well worthy of universal imitation. CHAPTER VI. ANCIENT EGYPT. The last branch of the human family, whose history reaches back to the earliest historic period, which will occupy our attention, though it be only for a brief space, is that which inhabited Egypt. Our information concerning the drinking habits of the ancient Egyptians is derived not only from sacred writings, but also from those of the Greek and Roman historians, and it is, moreover, confirmed from an entirely independent source, namely, from the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the ancient monuments of the country which have been preserved to our time.