But one of the writers whom we have quoted seems rather to have regretted the good old toping days which were departing, and to have thought that with the introduction of Oriental beverages all the manliness and intellect of his countrymen would vanish. Indeed, he exclaims despairingly, “And thus we see that it is with whole nations as with individuals. One wicked, vehement passion is seldom exterminated excepting by another. An old demon is rarely expelled otherwise than by a new one.”[207] This was written towards the close of the eighteenth century. What would he have said if he had lived to witness Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan? * * * * * We are all too prone to look upon the rose-coloured side of the national life whilst we are travelling abroad, and it may be that a German tourist whilst in England would be so impressed with the indications of industry and prosperity which meet his eye wherever he goes, that the heinousness of our national vice would be mitigated or partially lost from his view in the surrounding glare. So, too, it is possible that, in judging the German people of to-day, the author has been too favourably impressed with those aspects of life which are presented to the holiday-seeker. His observation has not, however, been quite superficial, and his impressions of the moral and intellectual condition of the Germans is not now stated for the first time.[208] Drunkenness appears to have given place to sobriety, coarse sensual pleasures to intellectual enjoyments resulting from the cultivation of music and the fine arts. The very temperance societies of Germany bear witness to the sobriety of the working classes, and present a strange contrast to our own, for they deem it unnecessary to do more than enjoin moderation in drinking.[209] The old writer must, indeed, himself have been imbued with that passion which for centuries made Germany the scorn and byword of Europe (although some of her neighbours, forsooth, had little to boast of in the matter of temperance), a vice which threatened eventually to hand her over to the same fate as ancient Rome had suffered at the hands of her ancestry. If only her people are as successful in securing political freedom[210] as they have been in emancipating themselves from the besetting sin of their forefathers, there is a great and happy future in store for the “Fatherland.” CHAPTER IX. ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT, LAY AND CLERICAL—THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND DANES—THE NORMANS AND EARLY ENGLISH.