AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 191 



pose ; still alcohol, in the people of Europe, and opium, among the 

 inhabitants of the east, are the magicians most generally employed 

 to smother the dictates of the judgment, and to give unbounded 

 licence to the dreams of an excursive and delighted fancy. 



The effects produced by wine and spirit drinking on the tempera- 

 ment of individuals varies extremely; hardly producing any exhila- 

 ration in some, whilst in others it excites the fiercest paroxysms of 

 insanity. It is not my object here to enter into any medical detail 

 of the morbid phenomena which are the result of the intemperate or 

 habitual use of alcoholic liquors of any kind ; I shall, therefore, pass, 

 in accordance with the nature of my subject, to their mental effects 

 on what the late Dr. Currie, of Liverpool, has termed the tempera- 

 ment of sensibility, which Dr. Macnish, with equal truth, names 

 the melancholy drunkard. To such men the bottle is a perfect 

 witchery, and contains spells as powerful as Michael Scott's book 

 of magic, filched, by the elfin page, from the vest of William 

 of Deloraine. It clothes external nature with new forms cf 

 beauty — it adds whiteness to the lily, and perfume to the violet — 

 it conceals all moral evil. To the minds thus influenced, the 

 men are all virtuous, the wom.en all beautiful, and mankind all 

 happy. The joyousness which it excites breaks in upon habitual 

 gloom, like sunshine upon darkness. Above all, the sensations, at 

 the moment when mirth begins with its magic to charm away care, 

 are inexpressible. Pleasure falls, in showers of fragrance, upon the 

 soul, and the imagination revels in a delirium of short-lived joy. 



" Elysium opens round, 

 A pleasing frenzy buoys the lightened soul, 

 And sanguine hope dispels the fleeting care;v 

 And what was difficult, and what was du-e, 

 Yields to your prowess, and superior stars : 

 A deeper blue colours the cloudless sky, 

 A stiller calm deadens the sleeping wave, 

 No storm to ruffle, and no frost to chiU, 

 No icy friendship here, no selfish love, — 

 But all is warm, and beautiful, and true." 



Hafiz among the Persians, and Anacreon among the Greeks, have 



