times. A loyal and generous courage, gaiety
and vivacity of mind, patriotism, eloquence, the
exquisite sentiment of personal dignity allied to
an excessive politeness, together with an
irresistible tendency towards the charms of social
life, were the principal features of the national
character. But when coffee, tea, and tobacco
successively occupied a place in their habits,
each of these more or less deleterious agents
imprinted a sensible alteration on these fine and
noble attributes; and notwithstanding the
continuous action of wine upon the French people,
"who still possess the best blood in Europe,"
the close observer may remark deteriorating
modifications in the clearness of their thought,
the precision of their speech, and the frank and
joyous expression of their aspect. Above all,
literature, that sincere and elevated token of the
genius of a nation, has received a fatal blow
through the introduction of these morbid agents
into the usual regimen. The encouragement
given by Henry the Fourth, Richelieu, and
Louis the Fourteenth, to the cultivation of the
vine, speedily bore fruit. During those glorious
reigns (for the cardinal was the king of his
day), the very best sort of people frequented
the taverns; and, under the influence of their
association, arose that luminous literary
constellation of which Corneille, Molière, La
Fontaine, Pascal, Racine, Bossuet, and Fénélon,
were the most brilliant stars. Under Louis
the Fifteenth (what happened while that wine-
bibber, the Regent Orleans, ruled, Dr.
Arthaud does not say), the use of coffee having
become general, men of letters no longer
assembled round the bottle. Instead of meeting
at the Croix de Lorraine, where Boileau
composed his Chapelain Décoiffé, or at the Mouton
Blanc, where Racine wrote Les Plaideurs; the
wits of the eighteenth century gathered together
at the Café Procope. To a literature full of
vigour, warmth, and conviction, succeeded one
that was polished but cold; witty, but without
the sign of true genius; philosophical, but without
religious vitality, mocking but uninformed
by that spirit of lofty and wise criticism which
attacks and overthrows vice. Who does not
recognise the cerebral stimulus produced by
coffee in the writings of Voltaire, of Diderot, of
D'Alembert, of Grimm, of Beaumarchais, and of
Frederick of Prussia? These men comprehended
everything, spoke admirably of everything,
laughed nearly at everything—but felt nothing.

The alternate influences of wine and coffee
made themselves apparent in nearly equal
degrees up to 1815. At this period the liberators
of France left behind them a taste for tea
amongst the higher orders, and, "perhaps," an
inclination for beer amongst the people. These
hypochondriac drinks restricted the use of wine,
and from this epoch (observes Dr. Arthaud) dates
that pale and melancholy literature in which
lakes, fogs, the moon, convents, tombs, cathedrals,
and saints of stone, played a principal part
in delighting a pensive and ridiculous jeunesse.
In 1830, the practice of smoking became
universal. In imitation of their young princes, the
French adopted the cigar as the necessary
appendage to every face. Smoke invaded the
public streets, the clubs, the cafés, and the towns
of France resembled then (how much more
now!) vast censers, "whence arose towards
irritated heaven an odour of the foulest description."
This pervading narcotism soon revealed
its effects in social facts. Idleness took possession
of the mind, the activity natural to youth
gave place to a sceptical carelessness, the
powerlessness of substituting acts for wishes led to
grievous mistakes in the conduct of life, and
wants remained superior to the necessary energy
which should have satisfied them. Socialism,
that great evidence of the helplessness of the
individual, came forth all armed with the
sophisms generated by smoking. The idle
naturally desired to get rid of the task of looking
for work and earning their bread, leaving to
the State to support them, their sole creed being
that which taught them to live at the expense
of others.

These are Dr. Arthaud's inferences from even
a partial substitution of "the weed" for the
nobler plant; but he consoles himself with the
idea that the French get rid of a bad habit as
quickly as they contract one, and that, as soon
as they become convinced that the narcotic herb
enervates the will, lowers the tone of the nervous
system, is with old men the cause of a host of
paralytic affections—such as paralysis of the
spinal marrow and premature weakening of the
brain,—and with young men an infinity of tics
and neuralgias, and, graver still, of idleness,
which engenders indigence, the mother of every
moral deviation,—then, he says, the French will
abruptly abandon smoking, and in the "goddess
bottle" (la dive bouteille) will recover the moral
and physical health of their ancestors!

Dr. Arthaud would hardly be a Frenchman,
and a lover of French wine, if he did not wind
up with a parting dig at Beer, and the people
wno delight in it. He admits the excellence of
Hungarian and Rhenish wines, and ascribes the
highest qualities to the people amongst whom
they are produced; observing that Prince
Metternich, the most prominent amongst modern
German statesmen, owed his superiority to the
stimulating qualities of his own Johannisberg;
and saying of the German people generally,
that if they had multiplied their wine-stocks
instead of their hops and pipes, they would long
since have acquired a more commanding political
position. But the doctor's study of the
parallelism between wine and civilisation would, he
says, be incomplete without casting a glance at
the countries which lie beyond the vinous zone.
"I cannot forbear to notice that the tendency
of these countries is towards a state of
immobility. Incapable of creating or improving
anything by their own unassisted efforts, all their
institutions have for their object the stability
and preservation of the knowledge they have
acquired. There are countries naturally
deprived of wine that know how to procure it by
means of commerce" (this is a great admission);
"there are others, favoured by Heaven, who