intensely and effectively, in the accomplishment of the great ends of his being. Without it, he would be incapable of quickened action. With it, he is invested with a prime element of power.

Overlooking the exact truth in the foregoing proposition, with what undiscriminating haste have the wildest inferences been drawn in vindication of the grossest indulgences that through all the ages have enfeebled, tortured, and degraded humanity. To infer that man's original susceptibility to stimulation is prima-facie evidence that the wise Creator intended that his physical nature should be kept under the dominion of powerful intoxicants, and that their free indulgence is in the legitimate line of his being; or that because stimulants of all kinds are a part of the vis medicatrix of nature, therefore they may be habitually used without harm, are conclusions palpably fallacious and ruinous. The world has seen too much of the destructive effects of such indulgences to believe that they come within the scope of the wise Creator's plans. The true philosopher discriminates between acquired desires and appetites, or vitiated, perverse, and inordinate impulses, and those which are normal, necessary, and beneficent.

Like every other original susceptibility, under long and excessive indulgence, often superadded by influences of heredity and custom, it becomes morbid, irregular, and inordinate. Deteriorated and abnormal conditions, with baleful consequences, follow. It is not strange, therefore, that many individuals, and even large bodies of men, have exhibited a wild and reckless passion for stimulants; and that the loose and perverted indulgence of this propensity has produced an incalculable amount of wretchedness, imbecility, and crime, “exceeding the combined ravages of war, pestilence, and famine."

Looking at the subject of stimulants in its largest breadth, comprising those of every kind, we find an exceedingly varied range of these fascinating indulgences.

People of every clime and age savage or civilized, have found methods for gratifying the propensity for stimulants.

The Hindu chews his betel-nut and pepper-wort; and the Indian of the Andes, his quid of cocoa leaves, reveling in its narcotic delirium, or the thorn-apple, under whose intoxication he imagines that he communes with the spirits of his deceased progenitors. The Kamtschatkan obtains intoxication from a poisonous mushroom, growing in that cold climate, which, dried and preserved, produces effects similar to alcohol. The Seminoles of Florida drank a tea made of a species of holly-tree, which excited them to great and savage undertakings. The North American Indians chiefly relied upon tobacco. The ancient inhabitants of Sweden used a beer brewed from a plant of great intoxicating power. And the Turks, forbidden by the Koran to drink wine, have long been accustomed to use hasheesh, a drug extracted from the hemp of India. Bayard Taylor gives a thrilling account of his experience in testing the properties of this wonderful drug; and Whittier, in one of his poems, humorously describes the effects:

"Of all that Orient lands can vaunt,

Of marvels with our own competing,
The strangest is the hasheesh plant,
And what will follow on its eating.

"What pictures to the taster rise

Of Dervish or of Almeh dances!

Of Eblis, or of Paradise,

Set all aglow with Houri glances!

"The poppy visions of Cathay,

The heavy beer trance of the Suabian,
The wizard lights and demon play

Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian.

"The Mollah and the Christian dog

Change place in mad metempsychosis;
The Muezzin climbs the synagogue,
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Moses.

"The Koran reader makes complaint

Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
The robber offers alms, the saint

Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet."

Opium and tobacco are more extensively used than any other drugs. Cocoa is used among ten million of earth's inhabitants; betel, among one hundred millions; hemp or hasheesh, among two hundred and fifty millions; opium, among five hundred millions; tobacco, among eight hundred millions; and alcohol, among hundreds of millions. Tea, the drink of many millions, when excessively used in strong decoctions, has been known to produce positive intoxication.' Cruder compounds, with stimulating properties resembling alcohol, have been used by many savage tribes. "From tea to hasheesh we have, through hops, alcohol, opium, and tobacco, a sort of graduated scale of intoxicants, which stimulate in small doses and narcotize in larger." In some cases, several of these stimulants are used by the same people. Having thus briefly noticed the great variety of stimulants used among different nations, we shall henceforth confine our inquiries exclusively to alcoholic drinks, the drinking customs, drinkers, and drink abstainers of the successive ages, down to the beginning of what in modern times, in its more organized forms, has been denominated the Temperance Reformation. The inception and progress of that distinctive work will then be sketched down to the present time.

*See Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Health, p. 129.