er better, but never half so well: indeed I find I
have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some
of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors.
First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep
like a baby or a plough-boy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black
visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollections:
Holland House, past and to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and
tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer
walks, and make greater exertions, without fatigue. My understanding
is improved, and I comprehend Political Economy. Only one evil ensues
from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must look out for
some one who will bore and depress me."

In 1834 he wrote:--

"I am better in health, avoiding all fermented liquors, and drinking
nothing but London water, with a million insects in every drop. He who
drinks a tumbler of London water has literally in his stomach more
animated beings than there are men, women, and children on the face of
the globe."

In spite of this disquieting analysis he persevered, and wrote two years
later:--

"I have had no gout, nor any symptom of it: by eating little, and
drinking only water, I keep body and mind in a serene state, and spare
the great toe. Looking back at my past life, I find that all my
miseries of body and mind have proceeded from indigestion. Young
people in early life should be thoroughly taught the moral,
intellectual, and physical evils of indigestion."

Saba, Lady Holland, who had a discreet but provoking trick of omitting the
proper name wherever we specially thirst to know it, thus reports her
father's conversation:--

"Now, I mean not to drink one drop of wine to-day, and I shall be mad
with spirits. I always am when I drink no wine. It is curious the
effect a thimbleful of wine has upon me; I feel as flat as----'s
jokes; it destroys my understanding: I forget the number of the Muses,
and think them xxxix, of course; and only get myself right again by
repeating the lines, and finding 'Descend, ye Thirty-Nine!' two feet
too long."

All this profound interest in the matter of food and drink was closely
connected in Sydney Smith with a clear sense of the influence exercised by
the body over the soul.--

"I am convinced digestion