The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-27 00:00:00

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THE LAST OF THE iIRANIA,ISKT_tw.
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DRINKERS. ' • , ‘`v-5,1..`,:: --; . '
. -
flas't of the- long ,rice .'of.
Well: there is no mistake' about the matter, ' attic ~
really believe that I ant the
brandy-drinkers. There were plenty OCIP-Nvik'en''T ‘.
began, and of all these not one is now left. Te viper-
ance took off the greater part ; and bad spirits this ined
those who remained : there were ',some who died
young, and yet not ' regretting life ; whilst ,others
were old men when the call came, and yet went
grudgingly, as though they had not had tro able
enough. lam the only one left, and this bottle t 'hat
I hold in my hand contains the last drop of distill ed
spirits that the world now contains. When I haN 'e
consumed it, as I shortly shall, and with it yielded m)r
last breath, there will be no more brandy in the world.
and no more brandy-drinkers !
Well : I have lived seventy years, and I have seen
strange changes. It is now 1890, and I was born in
1820. I recollect Father Mathew, and I can re--
member when it was considered no sin for a man to
warm his heart with the generous juice of the grape,
or to give fresh energy to his drooping faculties by
the aid of a little plesant inspiring drink. The
world was not a bad world then, although it was
always the fashion to abuse it. There were kind-
hearted geod souls in it, and there' was a warmth
and friendship which would offer a strong con-
trast to the chilly coldness of these modern
times. Men drank good stout ale' then, and were
not afraid of it. They kept it as a friend in their
cellars, and watched over it jealously, yet not in a
niggardly spirit. If they had friends they shared it
liberally with them, and . never dreamt of having
committed a crime. They made songs, 'and they
drank to them ; they kept their high days and holi-
days, and instead of setting themselves apart from the
poor, they
.made. the labourers come and be happy
with them. They had sheep-shearing and harvest-
home, and a hundred other pleasant festivities, where
the ale-keg was broached, and the heart of man was
made happy. They may call those times bad, but I
never saw better.
Temperance has changed all this, and I am old
enough to recollect when the attack was first made.
They who commenced it were kind-hearted men,
and there was much need of their services. Great
miseries (brought about by political causes) were
weighing upon the people, who had grown too
poor to brew their own malt and hops, as they used
to do, and so had been driven to drink villanous
compounds called gin and whisky,.and were fast sacri,
ficing their bodies and souls together. This scene fright-
ened a great many good people, who, without troubling
themselves about the causes, looked only to the effect,
and declared a deadly war againsi.alcohol, as they now
called this new enemy. For a season'tkey battled man-
fully and with proper zeal againt Mister 211cohol, who
was certainly doing an immense deal of misc.:jet; and
whom at length they pretty well managed to put down.
Moderation at first was the cry, and I, who was them a
young man, became a member of a Temperance So-
ciety ; but by and by they wanted me to take a vow
to abstain from all spirituous drinks whatever, even
small-beer, and then I took my leave of them, and
joined the Old Paddington Brandy Club (limited to
two glasses per diem), of which I am, as I said, the
only surviving membr, holding the last bequeathed
drop of the generous liquor whose extinction . has
been so fatally pronounced.
The me, then, of brandy-drinkers is at an end,
and not a drop of alcoholic drink of strength suffi-
cient to intoxicate a spider is to be found upon earth,
with the exception of the small wasting quantity I
hold in my hand. The whole world is a world of
water-drinkers, and man contends with the horse and
the sheep for a taste of that crystal stream whose in-
sipidity he professes to admire. The result might
have been expected. As the mind is influenced by
the body, and this latter is acted upon by whatever is
received into it, it has followed as a necessary conse-
quence that man has become as insipid as his drink,
and his life as monotonous as the dull never-varying
stream from whence his potations are drawn. A
cold, selfish, artificial ,set of beings have taken the
place of the old inhabitants—men who rarely smile,
who love not music, who banish
.. the dance, and
whose grand test of virtue is thrust into the
narrow limits that they prescribe for Temperance.
Instead of the good old English songs about " Sir
'Barley-corn," there is nothing heard but wishy-washy
compositions made over tea-tables by a parcel of gos-
sipping old men and women, who have not the souls
to put together two staves decently. All our poets
too have been tumbled off the shelves, because they
were not 'Temperance men. Shakspere went first,
for they could not abide the idea of patronizing a
man who is constantly exclaiming in favour of wine ;
and one by one all the dramatists followed ; old
Deckar, Martson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Messinger,
Rowe, down even to . poor Sheridan Knowles and
Lytton Bulwer. The ancients also were not spared.
Anacreon among the Greeks, and Horace with the
Romans, were voted abominations, and latterly the
comic writers have been going out of fashion. This
being the case, of course the novelists could not
stand: One by one they have been proscribed, and
now it is considered as great. an . abomination to
have a work of Sir Walter Scott in one's library, as .
it would have been in my time to be seen reading A 0
Tom Paine's " Age of Reason," or " Voltaire's " Die- , „/
tionaire Philosophique." ,,, ba4
But, begides this effect upon the genius and grow- ;inanir
ing talent of the country, another, still more to be 41_ at
deplored, has been produced on the minds and disposi-. icPtlin
tions of men. There is much less -generosity and '%l fl"'
warmth of heart than there used to be, for as-men 'Ili",
have made Temperance the grand saving virtue! they . 'l°l'42
seem to have lost sight of a host of other kind feelings ''''-'''.--I,':
which it used to be the fashion to cultivate. The
sympathies have been moulded into a set of stiff .
automata, which only move in a certain set direction,
and have no natural spring of their own. There is no
longer any spontaneous charity; and as to scandal
and malevolence, it seems to me that they never were
so rife in the world. Selfishness is now the leading
feature of the age, and the world has become so cold
and-chilly that I really long to finish my glass and
be out of it.

.sue.,
A.~.

What vexes me also, is to see the old Saxon Nor-
man stock deteriorating physically, for since men and
women have given over drinking ale, they certainly
have not such large families, nor yet such fine chil-
dren. Why this is I cannot say, but I speak of it
as a fact. John Bull was always noted for being a
strong-backed, broad-chested, long-armed, straight-
legged, full-calved, bull-headed, handsome-looking
fellow, and he could always lick every other nation
in the world when he had his belly well lined with
good beef and beer; but John never liked fighting
without his pint of ale per diem, or a good glass of
rum, and I set it down to his not having these that
we have been recently whopped by those miserable
beggars the —'s and —'s.

But I must now conclude this paper, for I feel that
I am growing weaker, and the last drop of brandy is
nearly gone. I suppose the Temperance people will
make a great bobbery over my grave, for I know
they have been looking after me for, a long time. I
care very little for them however. My liver is sound,
in spite of all they may say, and I weigh sixteen
stone, which is more by many pounds than the best
of the water-drinkers can come up to. What I re-
gret is, that there should be so little, social feeling
left in the world, and so very few even empty beer-
barrels. Brandy there is none—for here goes the
last drop !—Montreal Morning Courier.

ENDELSSOIIN.--It 19 reported of Handel, that
straying into a church where there was a fine organ, he asked
permission to play the concluding voluntary; but the organist
finding his congregation still in their seats after Handel had
r been some time playing, desired him to exchange seats fur he
saw Handel was not equal to the task of playing the people out.
A few chords from the other accomplished that which Handel
was unable to do. As it was with Handel so was it with
Mendelssohn on Sunday se'nnight at St. Peter's, Cornhill.
The concluding Doxology, sung by the children, was the well-
known air of " God preserve the Emperor," by Haydn. This
Mendelssohn took for his theme, and after playing for half an
hour, relying altogether upon the internal resources of the art,
and not upon any change of trumpets into fetes, or flutes into
oboes, still the congregation were immovable, and the beadle
had to go round the church and announce that service was
over. It is singular that all the greatest composers were also
distinguished organ performers. Mozart and Beethoven were
each prodigious on the organ, whilst Weber and Sphor, who
may be said to have refined upon known materials rather than
made new creations, were each wholly ignorant of the powers
, and harmonies peculiar to this king of instruments.
The Correctional Tribunal Was engaged on Wed-
nesday with the trial of eight men, belonging-to the printing-
office of Messrs. Lacrampe and Co., for an unlawful combina-
tion to enforce a rise of wages, It appeared thaethey held se -
gular meetings at a wine-shop, and carried their measures 1 y
formal votes, after debates between the cote gauche and the iti
droll. They were convicted chiefly on the evidence of a coin -
positor, who refused to comply with their resolutions, and w 1 o
was consequently excluded by the verdict of this body from
working in any office. Three were sentenced to imprisonme
for a fortnight, two for a week, two for three days, and one w s ;
acquitted.
A WALK Timorcir A TELESCOPE!—This morning
very extraordinary man received us with
and the Bishop of Wer -
my dear father carried me to Dr. Herschel.a I.Toshta,,tpgerneaatrmans.
Mr. Smelt joined us by appointment,
Gaveis doneits c
rheaut
revised, and corrected so many works : among them the last
introduced.oester eam e
li e iafterwards,s
the famous
uDsr
ed.
ieditor who Douglas,
ho thoaswhom published,t o•as thea n
and
ysotuhnedintvoitaytoioun rof
.D . Herschel, I
other strange ; it
nliand it held me quite Upright, and
nywooaywsatgthoeroorkouuganh walk ait lhske whichorl d
telescope.
idenacebe; bell-hoop, been dressed in
ference. Mr. Smelt led the way, walking also upright, and my
without the le.asftninthceornsveann
m.
father followed. After we. were
.gone, the Bishop and Dr.
Douglas were tempted, for its oddity, to make the same pro-
u firera gi en,
onene near r
oNf'' a
tubceo u
subterraneanl eu rs, i n the t
excava-
tions,eus
e
pro-
m, nade.—Diary and Letters of 11.1adu»te Arblay.
A fen- days since a number of Inen, employed in
by the smoke of which eight of them were suffocated.
toedf Aaia
idmi gpgr iun(gi e
n thetye al
ingahl
A clergyman, who addresses. the Editor of the.
Church Intelligencer, thus describes the state of the parish of
which he has the spiritual supervision :—" My duties are here
so onerous, that I have been able to overstep the boundaries of
my parish but four times since October last. Here are seven
meeting-houses, nineteen preaching shops, one hundred and -
,
seven fellow; who put on a black coat and a white tie, and call
themselves preachers, prayer andabundance,
and class leaden
and only me clergyman
for WS souls."
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