e, I have seen practised in _one company at one
sitting_; when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them only
to note their several humours." These beast-drunkards are characterised
in a frontispiece to a curious tract on Drunkenness where the men are
represented with the heads of apes, swine, &c. &c.

A new era in this history of our drinking-parties occurred about the
time of the Restoration, when politics heated their wine, and
drunkenness and loyalty became more closely connected. As the puritanic
coldness wore off, the people were perpetually, in 1650, warmed in
drinking the king's health on their knees; and, among various kinds of
"ranting cavalierism," the cavaliers during Cromwell's usurpation
usually put a crumb of bread into their glass, and before they drank it
off, with cautious ambiguity exclaimed, "God send this _crum well_
down!" which by the way preserves the orthoepy of that extraordinary
man's name, and may be added to the instances adduced in our present
volume "On the orthography of proper names." We have a curious account
of a drunken bout by some royalists, told by Whitelocke in his
Memorials. It bore some resemblance to the drinking-party of Catiline:
they mingled their own blood with their wine.[166] After the
Restoration, Burnet complains of the excess of convivial loyalty.
"Drinking the king's health was set up by too many as a distinguishing
mark of loyalty, and drew many into great excess after his majesty's
restoration."[167]

LITERARY ANECDOTES.

A writer of penetration sees connexions in literary anecdotes which are
not immediately perceived by others: in his hands anecdotes, even should
they be familiar to us, are susceptible of deductions and inferences,
which become novel and important truths. Facts of themselves are barren;
it is when these facts pass through reflections, and become interwoven
with our feelings, or our reasonings, that they are the finest
illustrations; that they assume the dignity of "philosophy teaching by
example;" that, in the moral world, they are what the wise system of
Bacon inculcated in the natural knowledge deduced from experiments; the
study of nature in her operations. "When examples are pointed out to
us," says Lord Bolingbroke, "there is a kind of appeal, with which, we
are flattered, made to our senses, as well as to our understandings. The
instruction comes then from our authority; we yield to fact, when we
resist speculation."

Fo