nets and entanglements, flung around it by preceding speakers, and in five or ten minutes, to make what was dark confusion regular and transparent as the day. Mr. Guizot's doctrines are terribly attacked, never his character or his intellect. There is nothing about him of blaze or fire. All is calm, practical, passionless. I think him the most adroit speaker in the Cabinet. Indeed, he is almost the only speaker. Count Molé reads, and so do others of the ministry. When Mr. Guizot had concluded, Mr. Sauzet ascended the tribune, and after him Mr. Remusat, with a little bundle of manu. scripts. He commenced reading his speech. I confess I am surprised to find so many members of this assembly reading their speeches. I was not prepared for such exhibition, in a nation famed for their much and admirable conversation. The French are reputed quick and nimble of thought and tongue. They are so. But they do not seem capable of sustained efforts. They can chat with the best parrots in the world. Very few of them care about speaking consecutively, three, four, or five hours, on a single theme. There is no continuing over a speech, as with us, to the second or third day. Spoken or written, it is never what we call long-winded. This reading of speeches, however, is becoming of less and less favor. The press endeavors to laugh it down. The chamber itself does not seem altogether to like it. The taking out of a manuscript is generally one signal for inattention. Mr. Remusat, as I said, began to read, and immediately twenty members getting up, walked into the couloir and hemicycle for conversation. Twenty others took up pens for letter writing. A half dozen stared at the Princess Lieven through lorgnettes. The extreme gauche betook themselves to lively talk around Odillon Barrot. The extreme right glowered at them in morose and bitter silence, while every moment President Dupin arose to ring his bell. The session, which commenced, as usual, at two o'clock, closed, as usual, at six. The debate on the Address continued three days longer. It was finally adopted by a majority of eighty-five voices. Such vast majority produced wide sensation. The Opposition were not prepared for it. The ministry had not dared to reckon upon it. The debate had stirred up and evolved the opinions of the chamber. The vote had settled them into form and distinctness. Eh bien, thought Mr. Guizot, rubbing his hands,-we are well sustained. We shall go strongly and triumphantly on. Let us congratulate ourselves upon this first manifestation of attachment to the Cabinet of September 6th. We shall carry out some grand measures. We shall make permanent a grand policy. I am at the head of the Doctrinaires. A future of success is before me. Do not dream too confidently, Mr. Guizot. You are indeed strong now. Beware how you presume upon your strength. There are storms in the future. You are to be railed at by saucy voices from yonder tribune, and saucier tongues in the Parisian press. You are to meet with shocks,-nay, with reverses; and there is one defeat awaiting you, that shall make you start in yonder ministerial seat, and shall half snatch the portfolio from your hand. J. J. J. LAMENT OF JOSEPHINE. THE Empress! what's to me the empty name? And shroud, with veil of pomp, my breaking heart? 'Tis mockery!-thought is with the days, ere thou, Tightening around my brain its serpent fold! It was a sweet, sweet dream of happiness Saw not in that bright hour, the gloom of this. -My spirit quails before this loneliness! Why did no warning thought within me rise, -Parted for ever!-who hath dared make twain Those HE hath joined ?-the nation's mighty voice! And thou hast bounded forward from thy chain, Like the freed captive! therefore-heart! rejoice Hath o'er their ruin, leapt to liberty! IONE. ANTIQUE EPISTLE CONCERNING BEVERAGE. 66 The following is copied from a Book printed in 1750, entitled, “ Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, Historical, Political, and Phi. losophical. By JAMES HOWELL, one of the Clerks of his late Majesty's Most Honorable Privy Council." The work is to be found in the Congress Library at Washington. To the Right Hon. the Lord CLIFF. MY LORD, WESTMINSTER, 7th October, 1634. Since among other passages of entertainment we had lately at the Indian Ordinary (where your lordship was pleased to honor us with your presence,) there happened a large discourse of wines, and of other drinks that were used by several nations of the earth; and that your lordship desired me to deliver what I observed therein abroad, I am bold now to confirm and amplify in this letter, what I then let drop extempore from me, having made a recollection of myself for that purpose. It is without controversy, that in the non-age of the world, men and beasts had but one buttery, which was the fountain and river; nor do we read of any vines or wines till two hundred years after the flood: but now I do not know or hear of any nation that hath water only for their drink, except the Japannois, and they drink it hot too; but we may say, that what beverage soever we make, either by brewing, by distillation, decoction, peccolation, or pressing, it is but water at first: nay, wine itself is but water sublimed, being nothing else but that moisture and sap which is caused either by rain, or other kind of irrigations about the roots of the vine, and drawn up to the branches and berries by the virtual attractive heat of the sun, the bowels of the earth serving as a limbec to that end; which made the Italian vineyard-man, (after a long drought, and an extreme hot summer, which had parched up all his grapes,) to complain that per mancamento d'aqua bevo dell' acqua se io havessi acqua beverei el vino; for want of water, I am forced to drink wa. ter; if I had water, I would drink wine. It may be also applied to the miller, when he had no water to drive his mills. The vine doth so abhor cold, that it cannot grow beyond the 49th degree to any purpose; therefore God and nature hath furnished the north-west nations with other inventions of beverage. In this island the old drink was ale; noble ale, than which, as I heard a great foreign doctor affirm, there is no liquor that more increaseth the radical moisture, and preserves the natural heat, which are the two pillars that support the life of man. But since beer hath hopp'd in among us, ale is thought to be much adulterated, and nothing so good as Sir John Oldcastle and Smug, the smith, was used to drink. Besides ale and beer, the natural drink of part of this isle may be said to be Metheglin, Braggon and Mead, which differ in strength according to the three degrees of comparison. The first of the three, which is strong in the superlative, if taken immoderately, doth stupify more than any other liquor, and keeps a humming in the brain; which made one say, that he loved not metheglen, because he was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive. Cyder and Perry are also the natural drinks of part of this isle. But I have read in some old authors of a famous drink the ancient nation of the Picts, who lived 'twixt Trent and Tweed, and were utterly extinguished by the overpowering of the Scot, were used to make of decoction of flowers, the receipt whereof they kept as a secret, and a thing sacred to themselves; so it perished with them. These are all the common drinks of this isle, and of Ireland also, where they are more given to milk, and strong waters of all colors. The prime is Usquebaugh, which cannot be made any where in that perfection; and whereas we drink it here in aqua vita measures, it goes down there by beer glass fulls, being more natural to the nation. In the seventeen provinces hard by, and all Low Germany, beer is the common natural drink, and nothing else; so is it in Westphalia, and all the lower circuit of Saxony, in Denmark, Swetheland, and Norway. The Prusse hath a beer as thick as honey. In the duke of Saxe's country there is a beer as yellow as gold, made of wheat, and it inebriates as soon as sack. In some parts of Germany they use to spice their beer, which will keep many years; so that at some weddings, there will be a butt drank out as old as the bride. Poland also is a beer country; but in Russia, Muscovy, and Tartary, they use mead, which is the naturalest drink of the country, being made of the decoction of water and honey this is that which the ancients called hydrome. Mares' milk is a great drink with the Tartar, which may be a cause why they are bigger than ordinary; for the physicians hold, that milk enlarged the bones, beer strengtheneth the nerves, and wine breeds blood sooner than any other liquor. The Turk, when he hath his tripe full of Welaw, or of mutton and rice, will go to nature's cellar; either to the next well or river, to drink water, which is his natural common CONCERNING THE DRINKS OF TURKS AND ORIENTALS. 541 drink; for Mahomet taught them that there was a devil in every berry of the grape, and so made a strict inhibition to all his sect from drinking of wine, as a thing profane. He had also a reach of policy therein, because they should not be incumbered with baggage when they went to war, as other nations do, who are so troubled with the carriage of their wine and beverages; yet hath the Turk peculiar drinks to himself besides, as sherbet made of juice of lemon, sugar, amber, and other ingredients: he hath also a drink called cauphe, which is made of a brown berry, and it may be called their clubbing drink between meals, which, though it be not very gustful to the palate, yet it is very comfortable to the stomach and good for the sight. But notwithstanding their prophet's anathema, thousands of them will venture to drink wine, and they will make a precedent prayer to their souls to depart from their bodies in the interim, for fear she partake of the same pollution. Nay, the last Turk died of excess of wine, for he had at one time swallowed three and thirty oaks, which is a measure near upon the bigness of our quart; and that which brought him to this, was the company of a Persian lord, that had given him his daughter for a present, and came with him from Bagdat. Besides, one accident that happened to him was, that he had an eunuch, who was used to be drunk, and whom he had commanded twice upon pain of life, to refrain, swearing by Mahomet, that he would cause him to be strangled if he found him the third time so; yet the eunuch still continued in his drunkenness. Hereupon the Turk conceiving with himself that there must needs be some extraordinary delight in drunkenness, because this man preferred it before his life, fell to it himself, and so drank himself to death. In Asia there is no beer drank at all, but water, wine, and an incredible variety of other drinks, made of dates, dried raisins, rice, divers sort of nuts, fruits and roots. In the Oriental countries, as Cambaia, Calicut, Narsinghac, there is a drink called Banque, which is rare and precious; and 'tis the height of entertainment they give their guests before they go to sleep, like that of nepenthe which the poets speak so much of; for it provokes pleasing dreams and delightful phantasies; it will accommodate itself to the humor of the sleeper; as, if he be a soldier, he will dream of victories and taking of towns; if he be in love, he will think to enjoy his mis. tress; if he be covetous, he will dream of mountains of gold, &c. In the Moluccas and Phillippines, there is a curious drink called Tampoy, made of a kind of gilliflowers, and another drink called Otraqua, that comes from a nut, and is the more general drink. In China they have a holy kind of liquor, made of such sort of flowers for ratifying and binding of bargains: and hav-ing drank thereof, |