ing their husbands,
daughters their fathers, tottering upon their horses or asses, a true
image of a Bacchanal. The public-houses are full of drinkers, where the
young women who wait, pour wine into goblets out of a large bottle with
a long neck, without spilling one drop. They press you to drink with
pleasantries the most agreeable in the world. People drink here
continually, and return at all hours to do the same thing over again."

This pleasant sight, so new to M. de Thou, continues almost all night.
And what is very particular amongst such a great concourse of people,
and such a number of drunkards, every thing passes without dispute and
quarrelling.

Let us now see what the duke de Rohan says on this head, whose words are
these[4]:-- "From thence I came to Trent, a place noways agreeable, and
famous for nothing but the last council which was held there; and if it
was not that it was half Italian, (being glad of coming out of little
Barbary, and a universal tippling-house,) I would take no notice of it;
being well satisfied, that the mathematicians of our times can no where
find out the perpetual motion so well as here, where the goblets of
Germans are an evident demonstration of its possibility--they think they
cannot make good cheer, nor permit friendship or fraternity, as they
call it, with any, without giving the seal brimful of wine, to seal it
for perpetuity."

M. Misson, who was also some time in Germany, gives us yet a larger
description. "The Germans," says he[5], "are, as you know, strange
drinkers. There are no people in the world more caressing, more civil,
more officious, but still another cup. They have terrible customs on
that article of drinking. Every thing is transacted over the bottle; you
can do nothing without drinking. One can scarce speak three words at a
visit, but you are astonished to see the collation come in, or at least
a good quantity of wine, attended with crusts of bread cut into little
pieces, upon a plate with salt and pepper, a fatal preparative for bad
drinkers. I must instruct you in the laws they observe in their cups;
laws sacred and inviolable. You must never drink without drinking some
one's health, which having done, you must immediately present the glass
to the party you drank to, who must never refuse it, but drink it to the
last drop. Reflect a little, I beseech you, on these customs, and you
will see how, and by what means, it is impossible to cease from
drinking. Af