Note 76 — JOURNAL. (continued 5)

The time of locking of doors at gentlemen's dinner parties, and drinking till the company dropped one by one under the table, has, with the equally disgusting habit of spitting about the floors, long vanished in England before a more rational hospitality, and a better understanding of the very first rule of good breeding, not to do that which is to offend others. Spirituous liquors are the fashion alone among the numerous frequenters of the gin-palaces of Holborn, and St. Giles's; even the old-fashioned favourites of our country gentlemen, port, madeira, and sherry, are found too heavy and strongly-flavoured for the palate of our modern exquisites,—and the fragrant and delicate wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhine, and its tributary streams, are the wines now preferred before all others, by persons of refined taste and moderate indulgence. This in itself is a great improvement. The gross desire of excitement by a quantity of powerful stimulants has given place to a temperate enjoyment of things, in themselves certainly the most excellent in the world. Wine-drinking in England is become altogether a species of dilettante taste, instead of the disgusting excess it used to be; it is indulged in with extreme moderation,—and so much have all coarse and thick-blooded drinks gone out of fashion, that even liqueurs are very seldom taken after coffee but by foreigners. Our gentlemen have learnt to consider hard and gross drinking ungentlemanly. I wish I could say the same of American gentlemen. The quantity and the quality of their potations are as destructive of every thing like refinement of palate, as detrimental to their health. Americans are, generally speaking, the very worst judges of wine in the world, always excepting madeira, which they have in great perfection, and is the only wine of which they are tolerable judges. One reason of their ignorance upon this subject is the extremely indifferent quality of the foreign wines imported here, and a still more powerful reason, is the total loss of all niceness of taste consequent upon their continual swallowing of mint julaps, gin slings, brandy cocktails, and a thousand strong messes which they take even before breakfast, and indifferently at all hours of the day,—a practice as gross in taste as injurious to health. Burgundy I have never seen at an American table: I believe it will not stand the sea voyage. Claret they have now in very great perfection, thanks to Mr. ——, who has introduced it among them, and deserves to be considered a public benefactor therefor. Hock is, generally speaking, utterly undrinkable, and champagne (the only foreign wine of which they seem generally fond), though some of a good quality is occasionally presented to you, is for the most part a very nauseous compound, in which sugar is the only perceptible flavour. Although the American gentlemen do not indeed lock the doors upon their guests, they have two habits equally fatal to their sobriety, of which I have heard several Englishmen complain bitterly. The one is mixing their wines in a most unorthodox manner, equally distressing to the palate and the stomach; i. e. giving you to drink by turns, after dinner, claret, madeira, sherry, hock, champagne, all and each of which you are pressed to take as specimens of excellence in their various ways, forming altogether a vinous hotch-potch, which confounds alike the taste and the brain. The second ordeal, to which the sobriety of Englishmen dining out here is exposed, is at the close of all these various libations,—which of course last some time,—an instantaneous removal from the dinner to the supper table, where strong whisky punch effectually finishes the wits of their guests, and sends them home to repent for two days the excess of a few hours. Perhaps, when the real meaning of the word society becomes better understood in this country, absurd display and disgusting intemperance will no more be resorted to as its necessary accompaniments; but of course the real material of which society should be formed must increase a little first. I have been told that the women in this country drink. I never saw but one circumstance which would lead me to believe the assertion. At the baths in New York, one day, I saw the girl who was waiting upon the rooms carry mint julaps (a preparation of mint, sugar, and brandy,) into three of them. I was much surprised, and asked her if this was a piece of service she often performed for the ladies who visited the baths? She said, "Yes, pretty often." Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,—in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,—and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other gentlemen, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here; and certainly Sunday is not, as with us, the appointed day for this disgusting vice among the lower classes here. Fortunately, most fortunately, it is not with them as with us, the only day on which the poor have rest, or drunkenness the only substitute they can find for every other necessary or comfort of life. Our poor are indeed intemperate. Alas! that vice of theirs will surely be visited on others; for it is the offspring of their misery. The effects of habitual intemperance in this country are lamentably visible in many young men of respectable stations and easy circumstances; and it is by no means uncommon to hear of young gentlemen—persons who rank as such here—destroying their health, their faculties, and eventually their lives, at a most untimely age, by this debasing habit.