THE REMEDIES OF NATURE. 47 



below the dignity of an eff'endi, the poison-vice is actually confined 

 to the upper-ten : temperance reigns in the cottage, while opium- 

 smoking and secret dram-drinking prevail in the palace. In Scotland, 

 where all classes have to conform to the moral by-laws which discoun- 

 tenance holiday recreations, total abstinence is extremely rare. For — 

 " Nature will have her revenge, and, when the most ordinary and harm- 

 less recreations are forbidden as sinful, is apt to seek compensation 

 in indulgences which no moralist would be willing to condone. The 

 charge brought against the Novatians in the early ages of the Church 

 can, with equal plausibility, be brought against the Puritans in our 

 own day. One vice, at all events, which Christians of every school, 

 as well as non-Christian moralists, are agreed in condemning, is re- 

 puted to be a special opprobrium of Scotland ; and the strictest observ- 

 ance of all those minute and oppressive Sabbatarian regulations to 

 which we referred just now has been found compatible with conse- 

 crating the day of rest to a quiet but unlimited assimilation of the 

 liquid which inebriates but does not cheer. And under the old regime 

 to be drunk in private, though of course not sanctioned as allowable, 

 would have been accounted a far less heinous outrage on the dignity 

 of the Sabbath than to whistle in the public street." — (The " Saturday 

 Review," July 19, 1879, p. 75.) 



There is, indeed, no doubt that the " snuffling, whining saints, who 

 groaned in spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green," * have driven as 

 many pleasure-seekers from the play-ground to the pot-house as des- 

 potism has turned freemen into outlaws and robbers. For the practi- 

 cal alternative is not between conventicles and rum-riots, but between 

 healthful and baneful pastimes. Before we can begin to eradicate the 

 poison-habit we must make reform more attractive than vice ; and, as 

 long as the champions of temperance shut their eyes to the significance 

 of that truth, their legislative enactments will always remain dead-letter 

 laws. Our worst defects we owe, in fact, less to the shrewdness of our 

 beer-brewing opponents than to the blindness of our Sabbatarian allies. 

 A free Sunday-garden, with zoological curiosities, foot-races, and good 

 music, would do more to promote the cause of temperance than a whole 

 army of Hudibras revivalists, f 



* Macaulay's " History," vol. i, p. 371. 



f " Every one who considers the world as it really exists, and not as it appears in the 

 writings of ascetics and sentimentalists, must have convinced himself that, in great towns, 

 where multitudes of men of all classes and all characters are massed together, and where 

 there arc innumerable strangers, separated from all domestic ties and occupations, public 

 amusements of an exciting order are absolutely necessary, and that, while they are often 

 the vehicle and the occasion of evil, to suppress them, as was done by the Puritans of the 

 Commonwealth, is simply to plunge an immense portion of the population into the lowest 

 depths of vice." — (Lecky, " History of Rationalism," vol. ii, p. 286 {cf. ibid., vol. ii, p. 350.) 



" Sir," said Johnson, " I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people 

 from vice." — ("Boswell," P- 171.) 



" Insani fugiunt mundum, immundumque sequuntur." — Giordano Bruno (Moriz Car- 

 ri^re, " Weltanschauung," p. 396). 



