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sentiments and doctrines of a pure Christianity. In all his poems is perceptible that spirit of consecration which he breathes forth in his stanzas on the death of Thomas Spencer :

"I will not sing a mortal's praise :-
TO THEE I Consecrate my lays,

To whom my powers belong;
Those gifts upon thine altar thrown,
O God! accept;-accept thine own:
My gifts are thine-be thine alone
The glory of my song.

"I worship not the sun at noon,

The wandering stars, the changing moon,
The wind, the flood, the flame;

I will not bow the votive knee

To Wisdom, Virtue, Liberty;

"There is no GOD but GOD,' for me

Jehovah is his name."

To Montgomery was ever present a higher motive, a holier purpose, than the amusement of his readers. He aims to make them wiser, better, happier. In him, after all, was fulfilled the fondest wish of his parents. He is a minister of God, a herald of glad tidings; not indeed as they hoped, to one tribe or to one congregation, for the brief day allotted to those who thus labor in the Lord's vineyard, but to untold myriads in either hemisphere, who, charmed by the music of his verse, and imbibing from it lessons of benevolence and love, shall be thereby attracted to its central glory-the cross of Christ.

F.

ART. III.-Lectures on Temperance. By ELIPHALET NOTT, D. D., LL. D., President of Union College. With an Introduction by EDWARD C. DELAVAN, Esq. Albany: E. H. Pease & Co. 1847.

PERHAPS few men in our whole country have done more to promote the cause of temperance than Edward C. Delavan, Esq., of Albany, N. Y. He has not only consecrated a large portion of his large estate to that cause, but has devated his personal efforts to the furtherance of it, with a zeal and perseverance as rare as they are truly praiseworthy. Among the many good things he has done in this way, his publication of the "Inquirer" deserves special consideration. Though some of the numbers may have con

tained sentiments to which all of the friends of temperance could hardly feel free to subscribe, yet the tendency of the whole has been eminently salutary. The number containing ten lectures by the venerable president of Union College, and largely circulated among the professional men of our country, can hardly be spoken of in terms of too high commendation. It is, doubtless, one of the very best publications on the subject that has, from first to last, been issued from the American press. Thus appreciating these Lectures, it gives us great satisfaction to know that the learned and excellent author has added another valuable lecture to those before published, and that Mr. Delavan has given the whole to the public, in the form of a neat little volume, embracing an appropriate Introduction from his own pen.

Though Dr. Nott is "old and well-stricken in years," he still writes with all the strength and all the vivacity of a young man. His reputation for eloquence, as well as elocution, has long been established. In pulpit oratory, especially, he has few equals in our own country, or, indeed, any other. But however elevated his former reputation, the Lectures under review must raise it still higher. They not only evince uncommon powers of ratiocination, but abound in passages of great force and genuine beauty. Though delivered (at Schenectady, N. Y.) in 1838-9, they are well suited to the existing posture of the temperance question; and the author deserves special thanks for consenting to their publication.

Had the venerable president attempted a systematic essay on the several topics introduced into these Lectures, greater unity of design and execution would, doubtless, have been apparent in the performance. But what might have been gained in this way, would have been lost in another. The rigidly literary taste might. have been better pleased, but the popular effect would have been much less salutary. Indeed, these Lectures-sometimes diffuse, excursive, and elegantly redundant, but always terse and to the point-are admirably adapted at once to enlighten the public mind and move the public heart.

Nor should we do justice to this very timely and very able performance were we to omit to say, that, though it makes no pretensions in that direction, it is truly a learned one. Nothing but the most patient and untiring research, as well as the most intimate acquaintance with the classical history of intoxicating liquors, could have enabled Dr. Nott to bring such a mass of singularly pertinent facts to bear upon the subject under consideration.

It is deeply to be regretted that the cause of temperance has sometimes been advocated in a tone and spirit, adapted rather to

repel and exasperate, than to convince and invite. Too little allowance has been made for the infirmities of human nature, and too little patience has been exercised under the tardy operations of the human understanding. There is, however, nothing of this in Dr. Nott. Full of kindness, he deals in argument, not invective. Mild and insinuating, he draws the line of circumvallation around the positon of the enemy with so much skill and adroitness, that he is taken captive almost before he is aware of it. Thus conquered, he is as well pleased with the victor as he is with himself; and better pleased with the discovery of truth than he is with either. We give the following specimen from the lecturer, and the rather as it embraces most edifying historical matter:

“Are then intoxicating liquors, of the kind and quality generally in use among us, deleterious as a beverage, or are they not? This is the real question; and not whether, being deleterious, they ought to be avoided? That pure alcohol is poison; that every beverage containing alcohol contains an element of poison; and that other elements of poison are often, if not usually, contained in intoxicating liquors, are known and admitted facts. That these elements of poison, however, usually exist in such liquors, in sufficient intensity to disturb the healthy action of the system, by the production of crime, insanity, disease, or death, is not to be taken for granted, nor to be decided by reasoning a priori. "The same article may be healthful to plants and injurious to animals; healthful to animals and injurious to men; healthful to one man and injurious to another; healthful to some men at one time and one degree, and injurious at another time and in another degree; or healthful in occasional, and injurious in habitual, use. Now how it is with the several kinds of intoxicating liquors in use among us, are questions of fact, to be determined not by clamor or dogmatism, but observation and experiment. To furnish data for such determination, however, no new experiments are required to be performed;-a series of experiments, reaching through more than forty centuries, having been already furnished-experiments tried first in Asia on the top of Ararat, where the ark rested; and since tried in Europe, in Africa, in America, and in the islands of the sea. We have only to collect and collate these scattered results, to enable us to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. "Hear Moses speak :-' And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine.' What next? and he was drunken.' I need not repeat the residue of the afflictive and humiliating details. Nor need I repeat the still more afflictive and humiliating details of drunkenness and incest, which the use of wine occasioned in the family of Lot, after their departure from the vale of Sodom.

"Hear Solomon speak:- Who hath wo? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babblings? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself

aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' Neither here need I repeat the residue of the afflictive and humiliating details.

-

"Hear Isaiah speak: But they have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.'

"But this, it is objected, is the testimony of sacred writers only. It is so. Would that of profane writers be deemed more conclusive?

"Hear, then, Pliny the Younger speak; Pliny, than whom a purer patriot or a profounder sage lived not, out of Palestine, among the nations: If we examine closely, we shall find there is nothing on which more pains are bestowed by mankind, than on wine. As though nature had not liberally furnished water, with which all other animals are content: we even force our horses to drink wine,* and we purchase, at great pains and expense, a liquor which deprives man of the use of his reason, renders him furious, and is the cause of an infinite variety

of crimes.

"It is true it is so delicious that multitudes know no pleasure in life but that of drinking it. Yea, that we may drink the more, we weaken this liquor by passing it through the straining bag,† and we invent other methods to stimulate our thirst; we go so far as to employ poisons. Some persons before drinking use hemlock, that the fear of death may compel them to drink. Others swallow the powder of pumice-stone, and many other things which I should blush to name.

"The most prudent facilitate the digestion of vinous crudities by resorting to sweating rooms, whence they are sometimes carried forth half dead. Some cannot even wait to reach their couch, on the first quitting of the bath, nor even to put on their tunic: but, naked and panting as they are, rush eagerly on great pitchers of wine, which they drain to the bottom, as if to exhibit the strength of their stomachs. They next vomit§ and drink anew, renewing the like career twice and

The custom of giving wine to horses was known to Homer.-Vide Iliad, viii, li. 88. Philip de Comines says, that "at the close of a battle, having made his war-horse, who was much exhausted and very old, drink wine, it appeared to renew and rejuvenate him." The practice is common enough among all our cavaliers.

Columella, chap. iii, book 3d, recommends giving wine to cattle worried and overheated with labor.

+ Columella, book ix, chap. 15.-The Greeks were acquainted with the custom of passing wine through the saccus.

[Vide Theophrastus de Causes, vi, chap. 9.] The Romans use to pass through the saccus old and too heavy wines.-Vide Martial, lib, xi, epig. 40: also xii, 61.

Wine is a remedy for the poison of hemlock, according to Pliny, lib. xxii,

sec. 17.

See on this custom Cicero.-Pro Dejotaro. Also Martia!, book iii, ep. 82. Suetonius, Life of Vitellius xiii, and of Claudius, chap. xiii.

three times, as though born only to waste wine; as though men were under obligation to be the channel by which wine should return to the earth. Others borrow from the barbarians most extraordinary exercises, to show that they are constituted genuine wine-bibbers. They tumble in the mire, where they affect to lay the head, flat on the back, and to display a broad and muscular chest. All this they shamefully practice, because these violent acts cause them to drink with increased avidity.

"And now what shall we say to the infamous representations upon the drinking-cups and vessels for wine, which would seem as though drunkenness alone were insufficient to excite men to lewdness? Thus they drink, as if prostitution and drunkenness, ye gods, were invited and even bribed with a reward! Some receive a certain sum of money, on condition of eating as much as they drink; while others expend in wine what they obtain in games of chance. Thus the eyes of the husband become heavy; while those of the wife are wide open, and employed in full liberty. It is then the most secret thoughts are revealed. Some at such times disclose the contents of their last wills; others throw out expressions, which, in the common phrase, they will thereafter be forced to eat. How many perish in consequence of words uttered in a state of inebriety; so that it has passed into a proverb, that "wine brings truth to light."

"Such men, at best, see not the rising sun, and thus abridge their lives. Thence proceed their pendulous cheeks, their ulcerated eyes, their trembling hands, incapable of holding the full glass without spilling a portion of its contents. Thence those furious transports which disturb their slumbers, and that inquietude-just punishment of their intemperance-in which their nights are passed. The highest reward of their drunkenness is the creation of a monstrous passion, and a pleasure which nature and decency forbid. On the morrow their breath is still infected with the odor of wine. They experience, as it were, a death of memory, and almost total oblivion of the past. Those who live after this sort, call their conduct the art of making time and enjoying life; though the day of their debauch and the subsequent day are equally lost. In the reign of Tiberius Claudius, about forty years ago, it became the custom at Rome to drink wine in the morning with empty stomachs, and to take no food till after drinking. This was of foreign derivation, and was introduced by certain physicians, who wished to commend themselves to the public favor by the introduction of some novelty.

"To drink is, by the Parthians, considered highly honorable. Among the Greeks, Alcibiades has thus distinguished himself; among the Latins, Marcellius Torquatus, of Milan, who had been prætor and proconsul, has obtained the surname Tricongious, by drinking at once three congii of winet in the presence, and to the great astonishment, of the emperor Tiberius, who, in his old age, became severe, and even

Vide Seneca, Epig. 122. Athenæus, lib. vi, p. 273; also some of the Preface of Columella.

†Three gallons, one quart, and one pint.

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