tion to its mere festal elements was then only a sideview of the matter in dispute. The Bagman's pint of sherry was not a measure of fermented grape-juice, it was his blazon of nobility; and the No-wine men are less the apostles of a temperance movement than they are the advanced-guard of a stern and ruthless democracy. Down with cut-glass! down with gentility! is their savage cry. They are the John Brights of the road, the levellers, the equalisers. With beer, they say, we shall have a severer code of manners- -no more of those amicable coquetries of touching glasses, no little sportive drolleries across the table. Men will sit grave and still, and look as black and as bitter as the liquor before them.

Men have remarked that wine is the product of Catholic countries, and that beer belongs to lands which uphold the stern, cold, defiant aspect of Protestantism: that wine is the drink of men who love traditions, and revel in the poetry that tints the past with the present; while beer is the beverage of ungraceful realism-of the trader and the chapman,

May it not well be, that some long forecasting commercial traveller-one whose gaze stretches far away beyond dry goods and fancy articles - has peered into the dim future, and descried the dangers that would gather around a remote generation of Bagmen, if all the poetising influences of life were to

be withdrawn, and they to be left alone with their "sales" and their samples? I like to think that these must be Gladstonian Bagmen, who will not merely treat the question in its financial, its social, or its moral aspects, but rise to the dignity of its "æsthetic" considerations; and not impossibly discover correlatives for Bagmen in the ancient mythology!

Ulysses himself was a sort of commercial traveller, and the Odyssean element is eminently distinctive in the race. I am sure, therefore, that in this discussion now before us, some of the litigants at least regard the issue as one involving interests and results very different from such as connect themselves with a "two-and-sixpenny suit!" But I return to the vulgar view of the question, since it is the only one the parties concerned have deigned to present to our notice. Had they approached the subject on hygienic grounds, it would have been interesting to know what fluids our medical authorities would have suggested as the suitable daily drink of so highly excitable a class; and whether, on the whole, lemonade, or a pleasant syrup, might not have been "exhibited" in their case with advantage?

The special maladies of classes are attracting much attention at this moment, and we are enabled to see why needle-makers go blind, why shoemakers are

dyspeptic and house-painters have colic; would it not be humane as well as interesting to push our inquiries farther, and learn why are bagmen so sanguineous-so generally obtrusive, noisy, and overbearing, with that plethora of animal spirits that constitutes "bumptiousness"?

If I ever attend a Social Science Congress, I promise to read a paper on this subject.

Not the least strange part of the controversy turns upon what is admitted by both sides-the fact that the cost of the wine enables the landlord to give these gentlemen a dinner far more luxurious and appetising than could be afforded at the price charged. I cannot say how it may be with others, but for my own part I read this statement with much astonishment. Till that moment I had not the very vaguest conception how these gentlemen lived. I fancied, in my ignorance, that they dined like country gentlemen or barristers, or other persons of like station. I imagined that they took hotel fare like the rest of us, and made a hearty meal off the sirloin or the saddle, with a little fish, perhaps, and a fricassee. It was only incidentally to the wine question came out the fact, that Bagmen were a species of errant aldermen, and that every station of a commercial journey was celebrated like a Lord Mayor's day.

I never knew that the apartment reserved espe

cially for their meetings was a temple of gastronomic excesses, and that for them were reserved the choicest supplies of the market all the delicacies of the

season.

Some ascetic dogs declare that they do not require all this. "Let us have," say they, " a simple dinner" -primitive creatures! they are content with salmon and turbot, southdown mutton, and a capon (not the worse of oysters), a damson tart, and some stilton.

We are men who require cool heads and clear faculties; let us incline, therefore, to temperate habits."

It was the modesty of this tone, the genuine honest humility of this protest, drew me first towards the No-wine men, and I said to myself, If the arduous fatigues of their career can be supported on such a diet, it is highly commendable in them to descend to it; and I bethought me that there was hope for them. Dr Richardson, I remembered, lived twentyseven days in the arctic regions on nothing but pemmican.

Shall I own it was by this modest declaration that these men drew me to their side? People who are self-denying like this, thought I, must be surely worthy of respect. They say, "We desire to eat simply, and drink not at all." Not, perhaps, exactly this, but they say, "No salmon at four shillings:

a-pound, no venison, not always capons, fewer partridges, no sherry—not a glass.”

I cry Hear to all this. I cheer the sentiment heartily. In my enthusiasm I would even go farther, and I would say, leaving the wine question totally aside, Why are these men to live more sumptuously than half the working clergy of England, the country doctors, and lawyers, and surveyors, and a score more of educated and cultivated gentlemen? Why are they, with or without sherry, to sit down to a dinner the like of which very rarely figures on the board of well-to-do country squires? Why is their life on the road to be so totally removed from their life in the family? Why are they, when immersed in business, the cares of which they take pains to tell us require qualities pretty much like those of a Cabinet Minister, to gorge like incoming Sheriffs? and why, above all, is the world to be bored with the discussion about their diet, and how it agrees with them?

Till they opened the subject themselves, how very few of us knew anything about their habits or ways. A general impression indeed prevailed that they were a talkative, pushing, presumptuous set of people, somewhat loud of speech, and self-asserting; but as to by what dietary these gifts were sustained and nourished what artificial supplies recruited them-how they stimulated their faculties by ali