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weeks. How a pipe was ever in my midnight path before me, till the vision forced me to realize it-how then its ascending vapours curled, its fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious ministerings conversant about, employing every faculty, extracted the sense of pain. How from illuminating, it came to darken; from a quick solace, it turned to a negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfaction, thence to a positive misery. How, even now, when the whole secret stands confessed in all its dreadful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond the power of revocation. Bone of my bone.

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of their actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet the chain of habit, or, perhaps being bound by none so obdurate as those I have confessed, may recoil from this as from an overcharged picture. But what is it short of such a bondage, which in spite of protesting friends, a weeping wife, and a reprobating world, chains down many a poor fellow, of no original indisposition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot?

I have seen a print after Corregio, in which three female figures are ministering to a man, who sits bound fast at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing him, Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, and Repugnance at the same instant of time is applying a snake to his side. In his face are feeble delight, the recollection of past rather than the perception of present pleasures, languid enjoyment of evil, with utter imbecility to good, a Sybaric effeminacy, a submission to bondage, the springs of the will gone down like a broken clock, the sin and the suffering coinstantaneous, or the latter forerunning the former, remorse preceding action,-all this represented in one point of time. When I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill of the painter. But when I went away, I wept, because I thought of my own condition.

Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. The waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those

who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the flavour of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will-to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it, and yet feel it all the way emanating from himself; to feel all the goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruins-could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's drinking, feverishly looking for this night's repetition of the folly; could be feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered-it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,

-and not undo 'em,

To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em.

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object), if sobriety be that fine thing you would have us to understand; if the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred to that state of heated excitement which you describe and deplore; what hinders, in your own instance, that you do not return to those habits from which you would induce others never to swerve? If the blessing be worth preserving, is it not worth recovering?

Recovering! Oh, if a wish could transport me back to those days of youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could slake any heats which summer suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the drink of children, and of child-like holy hermit! In my dreams I can sometimes fancy thý cool refreshment purling over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence, only makes me sick and faint.

But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence, and the excess which kills you ?—For your sake, reader, and that you may never attain to my experience, with pain I must utter that there is none, none that I can find. In my stage of habit (I speak not of habits less confirmed, for some of them I believe the advices to be most prudential), in the stage which I have reached, to stop short of that measure, which is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is all one as to have taken none at all. The pain of the self-denial is equal. And what that is, I had rather the reader should believe on my credit, than know from his own trial. He will come to know it, whenever he shall arrive at that state in which, paradoxical as it may appear, reason shall only visit him through intoxication. For it is a fearful truth, that the intellectual faculties, by repeated acts of intemperance, may be driven from their orderly sphere of action, their clear day-light ministeries, until they shall be brought at last to depend for the faint manifestation of their departing energies upon the returning periods of the fatal madness to which they owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far his good*.

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Behold me, then in the robust period of life, reduced to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains and the profits which I have derived from the midnight cup.

Twelve years ago I was possessed of a healthy frame of mind and body. I was never strong; but I think my constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. I scarce knew what it was to have an ailment. Now, except when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never free from those uneasy sensations, in head

"When poor Morland painted his last picture, with a pencil in one hand and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his fingers owed the comparative steadiness with which they were enabled to go through their task in an imperfect manner to a temporary firmness derived from a repetition of practices the general effect of which had shaken both them and him so terribly."

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and stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any definite pains or aches.

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, the first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the hours of recumbence to their last possible extent, is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never awaked.

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, the trouble and obscure perplexity of an ill dream. In the day-time I stumble upon dark mountains.

Business, which though never particularly adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me; I fancy all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up an occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform for myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c. haunts me as a labour impossible to be got through. So much the springs of action are broken.

The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honour, or his cause, would be safe in my keeping, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolution in defending it. So much the springs of moral action are deadened within me.

My favourite occupation in times past now ceases to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application for ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract of my condition was penned at long intervals, with scarcely any attempt at connexion of thought, which is now difficult to me.

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history, or poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak

tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature seems to sink before any thing great and admirable. I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or It is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and a general feeling of deterioration.

none.

These are some of the instances concerning which I can say with truth, that it was not always so with me. Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any further, or is this disclosure sufficient?

I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to consult by these confessions. I know not whether I shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they are, I commend them to the reader's attention, if he find his own case any way touched. I have told him what I am come to. Let him stop in time.

C. L.

ADVERTISEMENT EXTRAORDINARY.

PROSPECTUS.

AN office is opened by a gentleman of the highest respectability, to accelerate and make easy the art of begging, in this metropolis; for which purpose, a valuable Stock in Trade has been collected at a considerable expense, and professors of the most profound experience engaged. În short, nothing has been neglected 'to make it worthy the attention of the community.

An establishment of this kind has been long wanting in London. It comes under the head of a charity, as it feeds a great number of people. The Proprietors beg leave to state that, as it cannot be supported entirely without funds, any donations from the humane and generous will be thankfully received. Attention is requested to the following

CATALOGUE.

No. 1.-Three very sickly children (one of them subject to fits) to let on hire at 2s. a week and victuals.

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