so, it certainly escapes my obserof my friends. friends. I do not know a I cannot meet with any one who ion, therefore, I venture to assert ry small percentage of our poputure and oratory expended on the consider dipsomania as endemic. many titled acquaintances-and ns that the vice or malady is very acy; but the few patricians I do briety, and peculiarly careful to ers, distillers, and victuallers has et of intoxication; and Mr. Hane drunkard is the publican's worst and that publicans seldom adulhich I take leave to doubt. Havcounties of England, I have had a liquor, and I have found that ale ADULTERATION. 213 is seldom fit to drink except where it is home-brewed (a very rare occurrence), or at inns frequented by boatingmen and anglers. As to spirits, they are almost invariably watered. Considering the number of public-houses and beerhouses throughout the country, it would be impossible for the majority of their tenants to live unless they cheated their customers. In a village where a couple of small general shops can scarcely exist, you may find ten or a dozen licensed houses—a practical example of Falstaff's one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!" When men of the highest standing approach this question, we are at once in a region of greater moderation. They decline to indorse the absurd theory that alcohol is the cause of all maladies. Sir George Burrowes, President of the College of Physicians, distinctly stated that, "in the circumstances attending a large population shut up like that of London, he did not believe the human frame could be better kept from the ills which would arise than by the fair use of a good alcoholic stimulant." These are sober words, such as we do not get from violent advocates of sobriety. Mr. Brudenel Carter, who is known in letters as well as medicine, spoke to the same effect. This is, of course, the conclusion of all who regard the subject without prejudice; and in the light of experience, sound wine or ale, moderately used, is a necessity of life for all except a small minority. There are certain brains so constituted that the smallest quantity of alcohol fires them at once: many of their possessors must already have happily enlisted in the ranks of the teetotallers, if we may judge by the passionate invective which water-drinkers use. It seems odd to have to preach over again perpetually the well-worn apophthegms of Cleobulus and Pittacus. But the human mind is always prone to excesses; and opinion is apt to oscillate, as a pendulum swings, generation after generation, sometimes even lustrum after lustrum. It is perhaps humiliating that the judgment of able men should fluctuate after a law similar to that which governs the fashion of ladies' dress. Such, however, is the fact: else how could party government exist in England? ARISTOPHANES.1 No ancient author has been, on the whole, so well and so deferentially treated by his translators as Aristophanes, and yet, of all the great writers of antiquity, not one, perhaps, has been so imperfectly interpreted to the popular mind of the modern world. Not, as I have said, for want of skilful interpretation, but simply because of the lack of due cultivated receptivity on the part of modern readers. We knights of the pen-scholars, may be, more or less imbued with the spirit of old Greek wit -are given to deplore the dulness of the mass of contemporary readers, and stigmatise it in our impertinence as Philistia. It becomes us rather to use our best efforts towards its enlightenment; and as regards Aristophanes, British Philistia need certainly not remain in the dark. It may have enlightenment if it will. In the year 1820, Mitchell published the first volume of his well-known translation, and vol. xxiii. of the Quarterly Review contained Frere's memorable article upon it. Mitchell 1 This essay was written immediately before the author's death, and he did not live to see the proof-sheets. I remember how much he enjoyed the subject, and how he used to walk up and down the lawn studying the different plays and comparing the various translators. Most of the translations here given are his own.-F. C. Only admit the f the persons introduced, and which surely should not be the ks were admirably edited by two le Frere writing his memoir— mething of Aristophanes from a ers, whose versions of The Peace ג t t a h W h ΤΑ |